Tim Berners-Lee's Inrupt trials its digital wallet in Belgium to let 7M citizens receive social services and share data with businesses, as he worries about AI
The inventor of the World Wide Web is on a laudable mission to give everyone control of their online data. He's fighting an uphill battle. X: @noyesclt . Forums: Hacker News X: Tom Noyes / @noyesclt : Great read on Web3 and Tim Berners-Lee from Bloomberg. https://www.bloomberg.com/... Forums: Hacker News : Tim Berners-Lee Wants the Internet Back
Context & Ripple Effects
Inrupt grew out of [[a:933988|Solid, Berners-Lee’s open-source effort to decentralize the web and return data control to users]]. Its earlier pilots, including work with the UK’s National Health Service, put that goal into institutional settings before this larger public-service test.
The Belgium trial matters because it tests whether a user-controlled data model can work where citizens, public agencies, and businesses all need to exchange information—not merely as a personal privacy tool.
First-order effects
- Belgian participants can use Inrupt’s wallet to receive social services and decide when to share their data with businesses, placing consent at the point of exchange.
- Inrupt gains a high-scale proving ground for the approach it had previously piloted with the UK National Health Service and other organizations.
Second-order effects
- Public-service providers and businesses that want wallet-mediated data must support user-authorized sharing rather than relying solely on data they hold themselves.
- A functioning trial would make interoperability and trust central product requirements for organizations connecting to the service, while exposing operational friction if those connections are hard to build.
Third-order effects
- If such deployments broaden, digital-service architecture could shift toward reusable, citizen-controlled data stores rather than separate accounts and records controlled by each institution.
- The decisive question is whether decentralized data control can scale beyond pilots into routine services; the model’s long-term impact depends on adoption by both service providers and businesses.
The trend: The trial is part of a push to make user-controlled identity and data sharing a layer of public and commercial digital infrastructure, especially as AI heightens concerns over who controls personal information.