Our industry is changing rapidly: tracking standards are under pressure, consumers are more privacy conscious and legislators are trying to regain control of big tech. Solid offers an answer to all these challenges. It is a framework initiated by Tim Berners Lee, the inventor of the world wide web. And it is clear that this will be a game changer for how personal data will be handled in the future. The question is how we as an industry will prepare ourselves for this and how we all can contribute to the adoption of this new standard?

1. SOLID & DIGITAL TRACKING
WILL SOLID DEFINE THE FUTURE OF OUR INDUSTRY?
SUPERWEEK 2022 - #SPWK

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Jente De Ridder
Co-founder of Stitchd | Lecturer at Thomas More
Jente.deridder@stitchd.be
@Nihiel on Twitter

3. Privacy is a hot topic
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So, what do you do for a living?
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Data hoarding is not sustainable
• There’s no such thing as “enough data”.
• Investments are replicated among all companies for obtaining the
same pieces of data.
• At any point in time, you can lose all of those investments.
• Data collection has become a liability.
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Inspired by https://ruben.verborgh.org/ - Material
used under the Creative Commons License.

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Centralization is threatening the web
Big tech has evolved into the gatekeepers of information
• Browser vendors are no longer “neutral”
• Mobile operating systems are centralized around apps
• Search engines can limit the visibility of certain content
• Social media platforms require accounts to access the web
This hurts innovation, diversity and freedom of choice.
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Inspired by https://rubenverborgh.github.io/ -
Material used under the Creative Commons License.

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Initiatives to empower data subjects
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• Consumers are increaslingly
aware of the value that their
data holds.
• New initiatives, like the Gener8
browser, let consumers monetize
their data.
• Does this solve the data
hoarding problem?

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We have lost track
Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web, warns that the www
is drifting away from its original vision.
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Inspired by https://rubenverborgh.github.io/ -
Material used under the Creative Commons License.

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Linked data
Information is no longer limited to ”documents”.
Tim Berners-Lee proposed 4 principles for linked data:
• Use URIs as names for things
• Use HTTP URIs so people can look up those names
• When someone looks up a URI, provide useful information using the
standards.
• Include links to other things, so people can discover more
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Inspired by https://rubenverborgh.github.io/ -
Material used under the Creative Commons License.

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Linked data example
Examples of open datasets that are built around the linked data
principle: DBpedia & Wikidata.
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Jente De
Ridder
Person
Juridical
Person
Natural
Person
Antwerp
City
Belgium
Population: 529.247
Mayor: Bart De Wever
Start time: 4 October 1830
Is a person living in Antwerp.

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Enter Solid
An ecosystem that prescribes a way of building web apps, so that
people keep control of their data.
It builds on top of the existing W3C standards.
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Separating data from apps
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Inspired by https://rubenverborgh.github.io/ -
Material used under the Creative Commons License.

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Your personal data vault
Data is stored in “Solid pods”: regular web servers, with support for
access control and Linked Data.
Can be used to store every piece of data created by a person or about
them.
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Inspired by https://solidproject.org - Material used
under the Creative Commons License.

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Interoperable standards
All data in a Solid Pod is stored and accessed using standard, open,
and interoperable data formats and protocols.
Solid uses a common, shared way of describing things and their
relationships to one another that different applications can understand.
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Inspired by https://solidproject.org - Material used
under the Creative Commons License.

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Share your data safely
People can grant or revoke access to Solid clients: application that read
from or write to your data pod.
Solid's access control system uses WebID’s (authenticated by OpenID
Connect) to determine whether a person or application has access to a
resource in a Pod.
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Inspired by https://solidproject.org - Material used
under the Creative Commons License.

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Beneficial for all parties
Competition based on service quality
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Inspired by https://rubenverborgh.github.io/ -
Material used under the Creative Commons License.

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Beneficial for all parties
Qualitative, up-to-date and complete datasets, with the data subject in
control.
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Inspired by https://rubenverborgh.github.io/ -
Material used under the Creative Commons License.

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Gaining traction
The NHS is piloting with Solid in
Greater Manchester (UK) to have a
single version of the truth for
patient’s health records.
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Gaining traction
Flanders, a region of Belgium with
6.5M inhabitants, invests 7 million
euro in the foundation of a ”Data
Utility” company.
Every citizen will receive its own
Solid pod and governmental data
requests will occur via that pod.
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Gaining traction
The BBC is running a pilot with
“personal data stores” to store media
preferences.
Users are asked to link their Spotify,
Netflix and BBC account to the PDS.
Based on that, BBC will produce
recommendations for audio
streaming.
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21. Time for a little demo
solid-demo.netlify.app
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Setting up web tracking with Solid
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Web Tracking Authenticate pod
Nothing new here: add web
tracking to your platform. But
make sure that it follows data
standards.
Establish authentication with
a Solid pod. And ask for
authorization to write/read
data. Probably similar as you
do currently with a cookie
consent pop-up.
Write data to pod
Transform the web tracking
data in the desired format
and write it to the endpoint of
the users’ pod (based on their
Webid).
Read data from pod
Send a read request with the
needed parameters to read
data from the pod. A JSON is
returned with the required
data.

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Applications in Digital Analytics
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Product analytics Customer analytics
How are our users using our
platform? Where in their
journey do they get stuck?
What are they searching for?
Who is using our platform?
How can we make their
experience more personal?
Competitive analytics
What interactions have our
customers with our
competitors? What have they
bought somewhere else?

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Challenges
The architecture of applications will need to change significantly.
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Inspired by https://rubenverborgh.github.io/ -
Material used under the Creative Commons License.

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Challenges
Data storage is something that is currently taken care off by the
“harvester”. But who will pay for the storage when people store their
own data?
Different types of pod providers will emerge:
• Nonprofit organizations (Inrupt, SolidCommunity, …)
• Governmental organizations (Data utility in Flanders)
• Commercial organizations
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Challenges
Data model: how do we translate interaction events to a standardized
data modal that is universally applicable?
Need for standardized tracking terminology or integrators that help to
map event data to the right structure (JSONLD for instance).
Several standardized vocabularies used in a Linked Data context are
already available:
• Dublin Core terms: 15 common metadata properties
• Schema.org, Open Graph, …
• XDM from Adobe
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30. There is no other option
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The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

31. “
” 31
The future belongs not to data
harvesters, but to smart reusers.
Ruben Verborgh
Professor decentralized web technology – Ghent University

32. @we_are_stitchd
Linkedin.com/company/stitchd
Questions? Contact us.
www.stitchd.be | www.stitchd.nl | info@stitchd.be
Try it out: Docs: stitchd.gitbook.io/solid-web-tracking
Demo: solid-demo.netlify.app