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