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Two initiatives to create a more open web, where users are in control of their own digital identities and data, may be coming together. At SXSW 2025, entrepreneur Frank McCourt, whose Project Liberty<\/a> is developing open internet infrastructure (and is throwing its hat in the ring<\/a> as a potential buyer for TikTok<\/a>), announced that his organization has been in discussions with internet pioneer Tim Berners-Lee about an integration with Solid<\/a>, his open source project aimed<\/a> at giving people control over their own data.<\/p>\n In a panel<\/a> at SXSW, McCourt shared that his team had \u201ctalked to Tim Berners-Lee about Solid,\u201d adding that \u201cProject Liberty is compatible with Solid.\u201d<\/p>\n Though he didn\u2019t announce an official partnership, McCourt suggested that discussions were underway on a future collaboration.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re debating, or talking, right now about how to incorporate that \u2014 him and Solid, his Solid Pods \u2014 into the project,\u201d McCourt teased.<\/p>\n Berners-Lee, known as the father of the World Wide Web<\/a>, announced in 2018 he had been working<\/a> with a small team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to develop Solid<\/a>. He had also tapped British engineer John Bruce to head up Inrupt<\/a>, a startup built on top of the open source project.<\/p>\n Inrupt has gone on to launch a privacy platform aimed at enterprises<\/a>, where people control their data in online storage entities called Personal Online Data Stores, or Pods for short.<\/p>\n With similar missions in mind, Berners-Lee has been supportive of Project Liberty\u2019s efforts. He even backed its TikTok bid<\/a>, saying: \u201cThis project has my support. The web I invented was to provide power and value to individuals, which they do not have at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n However, there has not<\/a> been a formal collaboration between Solid and Inrupt and Project Liberty, the latter of which is focused on the development of Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSNP)<\/a>.<\/p>\n That protocol today is being adopted by a handful of apps and other projects, including MeWe<\/a>; Soar.com<\/a> (founded by Ancestry.com\u2019s Paul Allen<\/a> to build apps through a studio model); and the permissionless blockchain Frequency<\/a> (developed by Project Liberty Labs<\/a>).<\/p>\n Project Liberty also recently announced a partnership<\/a> with Free Our Feeds<\/a>, an effort focused on protecting the AT Protocol<\/a>, which powers Bluesky\u2019s social network.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n