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Tim Berners-Lee Warns About the Web's Three Biggest Threats (webfoundation.org)
Sunday was the 28th anniversary of the day that 33-year-old Tim Berners-Lee submitted his proposal for the World Wide Web -- and the father of the web published a new letter today about "how the web has evolved, and what we must do to ensure it fulfills his vision of an equalizing platform that benefits all of humanity."
It's been an ongoing battle to maintain the web's openness, but in addition, Berners-Lee lists the following issues: 1) We've lost control of our personal data. 2) It's too easy for misinformation to spread on the web. 3) Political advertising online needs transparency and understanding. Tim Berners-Lee writes:
We must work together with web companies to strike a balance that puts a fair level of data control back in the hands of people, including the development of new technology like personal "data pods" if needed and exploring alternative revenue models like subscriptions and micropayments. We must fight against government over-reach in surveillance laws, including through the courts if necessary. We must push back against misinformation by encouraging gatekeepers such as Google and Facebook to continue their efforts to combat the problem, while avoiding the creation of any central bodies to decide what is "true" or not. We need more algorithmic transparency to understand how important decisions that affect our lives are being made, and perhaps a set of common principles to be followed. We urgently need to close the "internet blind spot" in the regulation of political campaigning.
Berners-Lee says his team at the Web Foundation "will be working on many of these issues as part of our new five year strategy," researching policy solutions and building progress-driving coalitions, as well as maintaining their massive list of digital rights organizations. "I may have invented the web, but all of you have helped to create what it is today... and now it is up to all of us to build the web we want -- for everyone." Inspired by the letter, very-long-time Slashdot reader Martin S. asks, does the web need improvements? And if so, "I'm wondering what Slashdotters would consider to be a solution?"
It's been an ongoing battle to maintain the web's openness, but in addition, Berners-Lee lists the following issues: 1) We've lost control of our personal data. 2) It's too easy for misinformation to spread on the web. 3) Political advertising online needs transparency and understanding. Tim Berners-Lee writes:
We must work together with web companies to strike a balance that puts a fair level of data control back in the hands of people, including the development of new technology like personal "data pods" if needed and exploring alternative revenue models like subscriptions and micropayments. We must fight against government over-reach in surveillance laws, including through the courts if necessary. We must push back against misinformation by encouraging gatekeepers such as Google and Facebook to continue their efforts to combat the problem, while avoiding the creation of any central bodies to decide what is "true" or not. We need more algorithmic transparency to understand how important decisions that affect our lives are being made, and perhaps a set of common principles to be followed. We urgently need to close the "internet blind spot" in the regulation of political campaigning.
Berners-Lee says his team at the Web Foundation "will be working on many of these issues as part of our new five year strategy," researching policy solutions and building progress-driving coalitions, as well as maintaining their massive list of digital rights organizations. "I may have invented the web, but all of you have helped to create what it is today... and now it is up to all of us to build the web we want -- for everyone." Inspired by the letter, very-long-time Slashdot reader Martin S. asks, does the web need improvements? And if so, "I'm wondering what Slashdotters would consider to be a solution?"
Free exchange or censorship. Pick one. And besides, censorship never fixed the problem of fake news. The only solution to fake news is for readers not to be gullible.
Want a second opinion? Here's one: HTTP and HTML are getting long in the tooth, and Javascript is bloat. Maybe it's time to come up with a new stack? Something with better controls for deep linking and embedding, and better support for distributed/cached store-and-forward, and mechanisms so Web 2.0 doesn't have to be such a bolt-on kluge. Maybe a decentralized reputation system so we can choose our own echo chambers more readily.
I'm disappointed that after all these years Tim speaks mainly in slogans and generalities, and still can't avoid contradicting himself. Let's show him how it's done by talking brass tacks.
Missing from his list:
#1 threat to the web: Tim Berners-Lee endorsing DRM into web standards
It's also pretty funny that he thinks misinformation is some new problem because Trump was elected or whatever - Information on the web has always been wildly untrustworthy, it's just that the dumb shit public have been gradually brainwashed by massive corporations to accept it as some authoritative source to sell more advertising.
Much more worth talking about.
https://solid.mit.edu/
One objection I have is they're not well suited to binary data. This content-encoding stuff seems klugey and inefficient. But that's not a deal breaker.
Deep linking and embedding is what makes all sorts of problems possible. Cross site scripting, linked images that bog down page loads, tracker pixels and dead links.
Suppose cross site embedding and scripting were disallowed? Just don't support them in the browser - or at least not without a click to bring up an image. The infrastructure for ads would have to be overhauled, yes. A price worth paying.
Suppose there were restrictions on deep linking, so that a site could explicitly state what is or isn't exported? That way a Web developer could overhaul his logic any time without fear of breaking other sites' links into his site. I can't endorse making Referer mandatory, so a custom browser can bypass this easily, but... that's the user's responsibility.
Yes, I'm talking about limiting options. Options to do things that we've all established were bad ideas. That's why we have laws. Some laws, anyway. And RFCs. And call gates and page protection and user permissions. Make it harder to shoot yourself or someone else in the foot, and we can have (reasonable) freedom without (needless) fear. Seek the best balance by considering things on a case-by-case basis,
Maximum sustainable freedom by means of rules that make sense.
I'm disappointed that after all these years Tim speaks mainly in slogans and generalities, and still can't avoid contradicting himself. Let's show him how it's done by talking brass tacks.
This.
From the summary:
We must push back against misinformation by encouraging gatekeepers such as Google and Facebook to continue their efforts to combat the problem, while avoiding the creation of any central bodies to decide what is "true" or not.
That is literally what "gatekeeper" means, Tim.
Fake News is the new name for the same old problem, we used to call it yellow journalism, we saw over Eternal September and the same moral panic.
Eternal September highlighted the tension between two contrasting trends. The Internet was built on the free exchange of ideas and information. While the natural consequence of this, increasing availability, actually lowered the overall quality of the content. Panic ensued.
Some of us came to recognised that what was needed was to strike a balance, not choose between two stark choices. We saw was the average quality trending toward the mean, not simply going down.
Should we panic because the average number of balls in the working population is trending toward one? No we should be looking behind the headline to identify the reality and raise the mean.
fair level of data control
Unfortunately, Tim Burners-Lee has come out in favor of DRM in the HTML standard recently. As such, any "fair level of control" strikes me to essentially be "the corporation gets everything except for what they deign fit for us peons." Ultimately, that's what DRM is in practice.
At this point, I can't help but wonder if he's being paid off somehow. Very, very few people who advocate a "free and open web" would put DRM anywhere near it, because they're aware that it's pretty much a contradiction. This only furthers the perpetuation of the copyright laws that are already grossly biased in favor of large corporations at the great expense of just about everyone else. One of those expenses is the "free and open web" itself, if they get their way.
We must push back against misinformation by encouraging gatekeepers such as Google and Facebook to continue their efforts to combat the problem,
Notice the plural (emphasis mine)
while avoiding the creation of any central bodies to decide what is "true" or not.
That is literally what "gatekeeper" means, Tim.
There's a subtle difference :
- Tim wants the companies (plural) spreading informations/news to do a little bit of work to help assess the reliability of facts in the links that people pass around.
- Tim does not want a single central entity becoming the official authority on all truth (he doesn't want a central "Ministry of Truth").
They aren't contradictory.
But without paying attention, there's a risk that one devolves into the other.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]