Pop Goes The Status Quo

What A Decentralized Web Means For Ad Tech. Hint: The Prognosis Isnt Good.

- Lisa Lacy

Startups have been working on projects to decentralize the web for years—it was even a plot point in the last season of HBO’s Silicon Valley—but tongues really began wagging when the father of the World Wide Web, computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee, announced he, too, wants a decentralized web.

To this end, Berners-Lee has a new startup, Inrupt, which is working on an open-source platform called Solid, allowing users to store and exchange information without an intermediary like Amazon, Facebook or Google.

The internet is like a high-tech cake made up of layers of wires, software and protocols that transmit information. The web, on the other hand, is sort of like the frosting on top that serves as a user-friendly interface. But, like apps from platforms such as Amazon, Facebook and Google, it runs on servers alongside user data and has limitless access to said data.

Decentralized networks, on the other hand, want to change how apps work. Instead of storing data on application-level servers, they use lower layers of the internet—going deeper into the cake, if you will. This allows users to run new, specially created apps on their own devices—where apps can only access the data they have permission to use.

The big selling point is it gives users control of their data. And this, in turn, would end privacy concerns—and maybe even upset the digital advertising applecart once and for all.

Dewayne Hendricks, chief executive of Tetherless Access who is also known as the Broadband Cowboy, likened this to a public commons that users control. “But you can allow other people to see it and do things with it if you want—people that you trust will have access to data in this commons,” he added.