Solid was supposed to free us. Instead, it just made us easier to harvest.
🌐 ACT I: The Dream of Solid — Web 1.0 Fights Back
Once upon a time (2018, to be precise), Sir Tim Berners-Lee—father of the Web, slayer of silos, knight of the hyperlink realm—had had enough.
After watching his precious World Wide Web mutate into a surveillance hellscape of pop-up ads, targeted psy-ops, and Mark Zuckerberg’s eyebrow twitches, he launched Solid: a bold attempt to reboot the internet with a single premise:
“You should own your data. Full stop.”
The idea? Data pods—decentralized containers where individuals could store their personal data, control who accessed it, and revoke that access at will. No more platforms siphoning your info like digital mosquitoes. No more shadow profiles. No more algorithmic stalking disguised as “recommendations.” Just you, your data, and a world of apps that would politely knock before entering.
Solid was internet enlightenment with version control.
It was noble. It was radical. It was exactly the kind of thing that should have gotten Tim sued into oblivion by every VC-funded adtech parasite on Earth.
Instead, it got co-opted.
🤝 ACT II: Visa Joins the Party — and Brings the Banks
Fast-forward to 2025, and who comes waltzing into the decentralized dreamscape but Visa, the multinational colossus that made “2.9% + a moral compromise” a standard business model. Their pitch?
“We love standards too! Let’s build Agentic Commerce™ on Solid!”
Now, Solid isn’t just a platform for data dignity—it’s the backbone of your Agentic Wallet, a sweet-sounding euphemism for “the most optimized tool for corporate surveillance since the smart speaker.”
Visa’s implementation doesn’t just use Solid—it repackages it into a trust-based data interoperability matrix (a phrase so dystopian it deserves its own Philip K. Dick novel).
What was once about empowering users is now about empowering AI agents—yours, theirs, and your bank’s—to seamlessly share your data across ecosystems. For your convenience, of course. (And their quarterly targets.)
🧠 ACT III: From Data Sovereignty to Sovereign Data Slavery
Remember that dream of you controlling your data? It still exists—technically. You can still revoke access to your Agentic Wallet. You can still choose what to share.
But here’s the catch: once every app, every retailer, every transaction expects your data to flow through a standardized pipeline, opting out is functionally the same as disappearing. You either participate in the system or you become a ghost in the algorithmic marketplace.
And Visa didn’t just bring banks to the party—they brought a new class of AI Agents, semi-autonomous shopping drones that learn your preferences, predict your desires, and optimize your consumption patterns—all while quietly uploading every byte to the cloud overlords.
It’s the perfect trap: a utopia so frictionless you don’t even notice the cage.
🧠 Reader Comment of the Week (Cautionary Haiku Edition)
I once had my data
Then gave it to a smart fridge
Now it mocks my waist
— DataRegrets99
🔥 ACT IV: The Future According to Visa
- Solid was supposed to return power to the user.
- Visa used it to build a universal interface for banks, agents, and data merchants.
- You were supposed to be sovereign. Now you’re queryable.
If you think this is just the next phase in fintech evolution, congrats. You’ve already been agentically domesticated.
TL;DR
Solid was a digital Declaration of Independence. Visa turned it into Terms and Conditions.
You don’t own your data—you just lease it back through AI middlemen with bank sponsorship.
But hey… at least your wallet has a personality now.