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

Use what you make

timbl uses Solid on his website, however his home page returns an error:

Outline.expand: Unable to fetch <https://timbl.com/>: Failed to load <https://timbl.com/> Fetcher: <https://timbl.com/> Unauthorized status: 401

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