Thanks, Sir Tim. You've Done Us a Solid

Suddenly I understand why the social media companies are seemingly going insane and acting in their own worst interests—aggressively “deplatforming” their most successful content providers.

As suggested last post, this is a sign that someone thinks their current position of power is doomed. They are going to get their licks in while they can. Because they understand there is no tomorrow.

First, notice that the one company most aggressively deplatforming seems to have been Twitter. The one who has been most financially shaky at the same time. Cause and effect might be murky, but this confirms that the behaviour is suicidal.

So what bright headlights do these guys see coming towards them?

Suddenly last night I realized.

Solid.

Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web, has long been dissatisfied with the direction it has taken. Specifically, the Internet was born and bred to be decentralized. Lee laments how it has drifted from a liberating orgy of creativity to these corporate content silos. So he has been working on Solid; last fall, he released Inrupt (sounds like Disrupt) a first app based on it. 

I do not have a solid grip myself on Solid and its significance, but the men of Silicon Crevice surely do. I gather that with Solid, the user maintains control over both all their personal details, and all the content they produce and put up on the web. They hold it locally, and it can be pulled or moved at will.

There goes the underpinnings of all the web barons’ wealth: on the one hand, selling personal details to advertisers, on the other selling users and advertisers content created by other users, and on the other other, locking in users and advertisers with the strength of their established user base. They have always only been a middleman. And, like other middlemen, easily replaceable by computerization. Any pirate programmer now might supercede a Facebook or a Twitter or a PayPal within months.

The current reaction in Silicon Gulch suggests they know the Berners-Lee initiative is going to work. The Internet is soon going to go back to being the nervous system of freedom everywhere. And Sir Berners-Lee is about to become a culture hero of humanity for a second time.