Solid

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Solid is an abbreviation for Social Linked Data (originally capitalized as SOLID, sometimes as SoLiD), a web-based protocol designed for decentralized social web applications and Linked Data with features such as single sign-on, universal access control, and a universal data API.

Naming

Solid was named by Sandro Hawke during a W3C Social Web Working Group meeting as captured in the meeting minutes.

Goals

High-level goals description from: https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/#Bio:

Solid technically is a new level of standard at the web layer, which adds things never put into the original spec, such as global single sign-on, universal access control, and a universal data API so that any app can store data in any storage place. Socially Solid is a movement away from much of the issues with the current WWW, and toward a world in which users are in control, and empowered by large amounts of data, private, shared, and public.

Solid Applications

There's a growing list of applications at https://solidproject.org/apps with some promising projects, like Plume for blogging.

Criticism

Hype around initial announcement

Solid was announced with a vehement approach in it's early days, which attracted quite a bit of criticism, particularly because it seems to be hard to set it up.

• 2018-09-30 @davidascher: Trying the onboarding UX for TBL's Solid. Ouch. Way too early for this kind of press IMO.
• 2018-09-30 @hvdsomp: I couldn’t agree more with @danbri on this. I spent a very significant amount of time during my sabbatical year trying to get Solid running. The auth stuff was basically impossible. Even when helped by the in-crowd geeks. I too want to believe, but ...

Hard to set up

• 2018-09-30 @danbri: I created an account yesterday and failed to find anything I could do once logged in, never mind ACLing that nothing wrt the 99%+ of people I know who hadn't made an account on same Pod, or elsewhere in Solid universe. I'm glad it is still evolving but the hype is a risk...

Misreported by the press

• 2020-11-09 BBC: NHS data: Can web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee fix it?: claims "2 years" when it's been 5+ years, grandiose claims without related successful real world examples, and evangelizing risks personal medical information in England

See Also

• Not to be confused with SOLID, the object-oriented design principles
• Solid Spec
• Solid Presentations
• Solid Information
• https://solid.inrupt.com/
• https://kushaldas.in/posts/solid-project-webid-and-privacy.html
• Criticism: https://twitter.com/nileshtrivedi/status/1539190122092142594
  • "Uninformed opinion but Solid seems destined for failure. Overly complex where it doesn't need to be (uses RDF) and too simple where it shouldn't be (cryptography)." @nileshtrivedi June 21, 2022