Solid aimed to decouple applications from data by giving users control over their own storage and identity. Apps interact with user-owned “pods” via standardized protocols, allowing users to switch applications without losing their data. This model directly challenges the data silos created by platform-centric architectures.

While difficult to implement and slower to adopt, Solid articulated a clear moral stance: data belongs to people, not applications. Its influence lies less in immediate success and more in its insistence that fixing the web requires unbundling identity, storage, and computation.