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

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."

Comments

Thanks for the DRM

[Snufu]

Sir Tim.

Re:Thanks for the DRM

[Aighearach]

"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.

Re:Thanks for the DRM

[pots]

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.

Re:Thanks for the DRM

[Baron_Yam]

> 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.

Re:Thanks for the DRM

[Rick Schumann]

He isn't wrong, though. The Internet has become rather shitty, is getting shittier as time goes by, and if it keep up the way it's going, it's not going to be worth paying for anymore, not for the risks, intrusions to privacy, and other bullshit we're all increasingly having to try to work around and otherwise put up with.

As Expected

[avandesande]

"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.

Re:The web is great, advertisements are the fail

[lgw]

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". Heck, the specific problem TBL seems to be on about is confined to ads on the web (people still see those?).

Obviously you don't have a free and open Web if by "Web" you mean "Facebook". If you go to one corp's site, you get controlled by that corp - that's on you, not "the Web".

Re:Simple solution

[Altrag]

They won't. Free stuff is more important to people than some random company somewhere knowing that they ate a salad for lunch or whatever. We might not prefer being constantly tracked, but for the vast majority of people its a minor concern, with a few exceptions (naked pictures, medical history and the such,) and vastly eclipsed by the convenience of the modern world.

Online advertising isn't really a huge issue anymore either to be honest. Sure its annoying as hell, but Google does a pretty good job of ensuring its AdSense ads aren't too invasive (maybe not a perfect job, but far better than you'd get from the government introducing an almost-certainly-broken legal restriction) and you have AdBlock/uBlock/etc to minimize much of the rest of it.

Really, the biggest problems with the internet are no longer corporate and haven't been for a while. Sure there's still some issues coming from that camp but right now politics is by far the more dangerous beast in the pit -- countries like China that wall themselves off as a way to control their populace, countries like the US that are about to intentionally break net neutrality purely to benefit a small number of large ISPs, countries like Russia that allow and even promote hackers breaking everything (you think those people just go back to a day job between US elections?)

The internet was designed to work around physical damage, and it inherently works around data damage such as copyright restrictions due to massive redundancy, but its cracks start showing when the attackers are the major gatekeepers and ISPs since they're essentially attacking their own service. Sure in theory you could create your own off-the-grid "internet" as a workaround but even if you managed to scale it up to the level of the current internet, you'd just find that you're in the same boat and would be facing the same problems. Someone is always going to be in control of the fattest pipes, and those pipes in turn control basically everything in practice, even if not in principle.

Re:The web is great, advertisements are the fail

[XXongo]

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.

Re:The web is great, advertisements are the fail

[lgw]

"AIs that figure out how to distract them" on Facebook and on Google ads, not in general. It's only worthwhile to manipulate Facebook's algorithms because it's not the open web. And as for ads: of course ads deceitfully manipulate you; I mean, really, is any adult unclear on that? But ads are trivial to block.