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Tim Berners-Lee on the Future of the Web: 'The System is Failing' (theguardian.com)

Posted by msmash on from the Tim-speaks dept.

Olivia Solon, writing for The Guardian: The inventor of the world wide web always maintained his creation was a reflection of humanity -- the good, the bad and the ugly. But Berners-Lee's vision for an "open platform that allows anyone to share information, access opportunities and collaborate across geographical boundaries" has been challenged by increasingly powerful digital gatekeepers whose algorithms can be weaponised by master manipulators. "I'm still an optimist, but an optimist standing at the top of the hill with a nasty storm blowing in my face, hanging on to a fence," said the British computer scientist. "We have to grit our teeth and hang on to the fence and not take it for granted that the web will lead us to wonderful things," he said. The spread of misinformation and propaganda online has exploded partly because of the way the advertising systems of large digital platforms such as Google or Facebook have been designed to hold people's attention. "People are being distorted by very finely trained AIs that figure out how to distract them," said Berners-Lee. In some cases, these platforms offer users who create content a cut of advertising revenue. The financial incentive drove Macedonian teenagers with "no political skin in the game" to generate political clickbait fake news that was distributed on Facebook and funded by revenue from Google's automated advertising engine AdSense. "The system is failing. The way ad revenue works with clickbait is not fulfilling the goal of helping humanity promote truth and democracy. So I am concerned," said Berners-Lee, who in March called for the regulation of online political advertising to prevent it from being used in "unethical ways."

10 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. The web is great, advertisements are the fail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The battle for the medium is sadly lost.

    1. Re:The web is great, advertisements are the fail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Nobody forces you on the 1 percent controlled sites such as Facebook, Google or Twitter.

      Run your own little server at your DSL modem.

      Use the YaCy search engine.

      Get your news from RT and see how the elite lies to you every single day.

    2. Re:The web is great, advertisements are the fail by XXongo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Nobody forces you on the 1 percent controlled sites such as Facebook, Google or Twitter.

      This. The problem isn't "the Web", the problem is "social media and AdSense".

      As the summary says, "People are being distorted by very finely trained AIs that figure out how to distract them." Nobody "forces" you on the clickbait sites: but the AIs figure out what will get to you, and makes sure it's made available. If you use the web: you are being watched. Not by big brother, but by data analysis tools that are figuring out where you go and what you click.

      If you think you're immune just because you don't use Facebook, Google, or Twitter... well, maybe. But more likely you just are being manipulated so deftly that you are unable to notice that you are being manipulated.

  2. Thanks for the DRM by Snufu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sir Tim.

    1. Re:Thanks for the DRM by Aighearach · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Everybody is doing what they want instead of following my vision that they didn't share... the `system' is failing!" Well, maybe not. Maybe it is you that don't share their vision?

      I mean, I'm sure I personally prefer his vision, but why would "the system," ie everybody collectively, be following him? Should we also find all the engineers that built our cars and let them choose where we drive? It seems rather silly that an engineer building a tool would also tell us about policy and politics and business and all that.

      He complains about content and advertising, why isn't he publishing better content? It is open, people just aren't publishing what he wanted. He can fix that himself if he's actually talking about anything that is lacking; but no, instead he wants to tell people what NOT to publish. It won't work, they won't care.

    2. Re:Thanks for the DRM by pots · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It seems like you missed the point of the article entirely. The problem is not that people are doing what they want, the problem is that they can't. Or won't be able to. The idea is that, increasingly, it's these "gatekeepers" dictating to us what we should want. The article mentions the attack on net neutrality specifically, being something which prevents people from doing what they want. (Unless of course, what you want just happens to be exactly what will make the most money for ISPs.)

      I don't know how you could have read that and heard exactly the opposite of what the article was saying.

    3. Re:Thanks for the DRM by Baron_Yam · · Score: 4, Insightful

      > It won't work, they won't care.

      Some people, perhaps even the vast majority, are frightened sheep who need a shepherd. The problem is we all think we know who the best shepherd is (frequently we imagine it is us) and everyone else is a sheep, and nobody can agree on a shepherd-identification method other than "they agree with my firmly held beliefs".

      Somebody needs to tell the mob when they're wrong, when they're hurting themselves, and force them to behave in their own best interests. The inability (and perhaps fundamental impossibility) to identify and accept the best leaders and then follow their lead does not change the fact that the average person is a short-sighted, self-defeating, ignorant fool who is easily influenced but incapable of deciding what best to be influenced by. It's amazing the species has gotten as far as it has, really.

  3. Re:TBL is delusional. Or an academic Marxist. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What you call delusional, some call idealists.

    A world without slavery, where women and men are considered equals, where conflicts between nations can be resolved through negotiation instead of war, where democracy is preferred to tyranny, where civilization trumps barbarism, is also contrary to human nature. Yet, all these goals are being achieved, albeit slowly.

    Why ? Because of "academic marxists" and other types of idealists who believe that, against all odds, humanity can rise above basic animal barbarism and become more than the sum of its parts.

  4. As Expected by avandesande · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "The inventor of the world wide web always maintained his creation was a reflection of humanity -- the good, the bad and the ugly."

    Consolidation of knowledge and power into a few hands.. sounds pretty run of the mill to me.

    --
    love is just extroverted narcissism
  5. Re:lol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Right, the fact that Google pushed Chrome on it's search page didn't factor into it at all.

    It really had no significant impact at all.

    Users who saw such an advertisement for Chrome would still have had to:

    1) Choose to download Chrome.
    2) Choose to install Chrome.
    3) Choose to try Chrome for the first time.
    4) Choose to continue using Chrome again and again and again and again, for years on end.
    5) Choose to not use Firefox, or Edge, or Safari, or whatever other web browser(s) they might have installed.

    Just seeing an advertisement for Chrome doesn't automatically result in a user taking all 5 of those steps.

    As anyone who knows anything about advertising knows, it's exceptional when even 0.5% of advertisement viewers actually take some action based on the advertisement that they saw.

    Fools like you who are blaming "advertisements" for Firefox's absolute failure are going out of your way to deny the obvious fact: users dislike Firefox, users like Chrome, and these users are happy to stop using Firefox in favor of using Chrome instead.