Two initiatives to create a extra open internet, the place customers are in charge of their very own digital identities and knowledge, could also be coming collectively. At SXSW 2025, entrepreneur Frank McCourt, whose Project Liberty is creating open web infrastructure (and is throwing its hat in the ring as a potential buyer for TikTok), introduced that his group has been in discussions with web pioneer Tim Berners-Lee about an integration with Solid, his open source project aimed at giving folks management over their very own knowledge.
In a panel at SXSW, McCourt shared that his workforce had “talked to Tim Berners-Lee about Strong,” including that “Undertaking Liberty is suitable with Strong.”
Although he didn’t announce an official partnership, McCourt recommended that discussions had been underway on a future collaboration.
“We’re debating, or speaking, proper now about the way to incorporate that — him and Strong, his Strong Pods — into the mission,” McCourt teased.
Berners-Lee, often called the father of the World Wide Web, announced in 2018 he had been working with a small workforce on the Massachusetts Institute of Expertise to develop Solid. He had additionally tapped British engineer John Bruce to move up Inrupt, a startup constructed on high of the open supply mission.
Inrupt has gone on to launch a privacy platform aimed at enterprises, the place folks management their knowledge in on-line storage entities referred to as Private On-line Knowledge Shops, or Pods for brief.
With comparable missions in thoughts, Berners-Lee has been supportive of Undertaking Liberty’s efforts. He even backed its TikTok bid, saying: “This mission has my help. The net I invented was to offer energy and worth to people, which they don’t have in the mean time.”
Nevertheless, there has not been a proper collaboration between Strong and Inrupt and Undertaking Liberty, the latter of which is targeted on the event of Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSNP).
That protocol right this moment is being adopted by a handful of apps and different initiatives, together with MeWe; Soar.com (based by Ancestry.com’s Paul Allen to construct apps by way of a studio mannequin); and the permissionless blockchain Frequency (developed by Project Liberty Labs).
Undertaking Liberty additionally recently announced a partnership with Free Our Feeds, an effort focused on protecting the AT Protocol, which powers Bluesky’s social community.
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