Solid

Solid (Social Linked Data)[1] is a web decentralization project led by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, developed collaboratively at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The project "aims to radically change the way Web applications work today, resulting in true data ownership as well as improved privacy"[2] by developing a platform for linked-data applications that are completely decentralized and fully under users' control rather than controlled by other entities. The ultimate goal of Solid is to allow users to have full control of their own data, including access control and storage location. To that end, Tim Berners-Lee formed a company called Inrupt to help build a commercial ecosystem to fuel Solid. Contents 1 History 2 Design 3 See also 4 References 5 External links History Two decades after Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989, he outlined the design issues of what later became the Solid project in drafts he wrote for the World Wide Web Consortium.[3][4] Berners-Lee became increasingly dismayed at seeing his invention being abused, such as when Russian hackers interfered with the 2016 US elections, when the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal became public, when Facebook in 2012 conducted psychological experiments on nearly 700,000 users in secret, and when Google and Amazon applied for patents on devices that listen for emotional changes in human voices.[5] Berners-Lee felt that the Internet was in need of repair and conceived the Solid project as a first step to fix it, as a way to give individual users full control over usage of their data.[6] The Solid project is available to anyone to join and contribute, although Berners-Lee advises that people without coding skills should instead advocate publicly for changing the Internet.[7] In 2015, MIT received a gift from Mastercard to support the development of Solid. Berners-Lee's research team collaborated with the Qatar Computing Research Institute and Oxford University on Solid.[8] In 2018, Berners-Lee took a sabbatical from MIT to launch a commercial venture based on Solid, named Inrupt.[9][10] The company's mission is to "to provide commercial energy and an ecosystem to help protect the integrity and quality of the new web built on Solid."[11]