Turning the Privacy World “Right Side Up”

Over the past few years, I’ve been deeply immersed in the world of privacy and so, when Tim last week said “[Solid is] the platform that turns the privacy world upside down - or, should I say, right side up,” -- it hit me as dead on with one of the major benefits of what we’re doing.

He was speaking at last week’s International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners conference: there to discuss his concern that, as global web accessibility grows - which is good - forces in the centralized web can become more potent, perpetuating problems around data privacy, inequity and increasing the potential for division.  

A few days later, he presented at MozFest in the UK (Side note: thanks to all who came by our area at Mozfest to chat.) Key to his talk there was how he doesn’t want to contribute any more to the “monetization data stream” that’s at the heart of the way the web works today. When businesses know everything about you, nothing is private anymore. By giving away data, you become a target for advertising, or subject to political manipulation and fake news. It’s a web where your data works for “others” and not for you.

These were key drivers behind the original concept of the Solid platform, and now, Inrupt.

Solid essentially solves today’s privacy conundrum, more effectively than any single piece of legislation can hope. It’s putting data back into the hands of users, not service providers.

A necessary inversion from how things are ... to how they should be.