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Tim Berners-Lee Urges Web Users: 'Care About Your Data' (marketwatch.com)
"As the web celebrated its 29th birthday last week, Berners-Lee expressed disappointment with how his invention has turned out," reports MarketWatch. "He criticized Facebook and other tech heavyweights last week, saying they have 'made it possible to weaponize the web at scale.'
"But on Monday, the British computer scientist essentially told Zuck to buck up. 'I would say to him: You can fix it,' Berners-Lee tweeted. 'It won't be easy, but if companies work with governments, activists, academics and web users, we can make sure platforms serve humanity.'"
Tim Berners-Lee writes: This is a serious moment for the web's future. But I want us to remain hopeful. The problems we see today are bugs in the system. Bugs can cause damage, but bugs are created by people, and can be fixed by people.... My message to all web users today is this: I may have invented the web, but you make it what it is. And it's up to all of us to build a web that reflects our hopes & fulfils our dreams more than it magnifies our fears & deepens our divisions... Get involved. Care about your data. It belongs to you.
If we each take a little of the time we spend using the web to fight for the web, I think we'll be ok. Tell companies and your government representatives that your data and the web matter.
"But on Monday, the British computer scientist essentially told Zuck to buck up. 'I would say to him: You can fix it,' Berners-Lee tweeted. 'It won't be easy, but if companies work with governments, activists, academics and web users, we can make sure platforms serve humanity.'"
Tim Berners-Lee writes: This is a serious moment for the web's future. But I want us to remain hopeful. The problems we see today are bugs in the system. Bugs can cause damage, but bugs are created by people, and can be fixed by people.... My message to all web users today is this: I may have invented the web, but you make it what it is. And it's up to all of us to build a web that reflects our hopes & fulfils our dreams more than it magnifies our fears & deepens our divisions... Get involved. Care about your data. It belongs to you.
If we each take a little of the time we spend using the web to fight for the web, I think we'll be ok. Tell companies and your government representatives that your data and the web matter.
If everyone could host servers, the problem of centralized data harvesting would evaporate overnight.
... it's that it's way too late to do anything about it.
The Internet is infected with capitalism and there ain't one goddam fucking thing that can be done about it.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Sorry Tim but your wrong here, you can't fix facebook because the mistake is systemic - it's centralised, and there is no fix for that which results in facebook still existing and profiting from user data on the other side. So long as facebook exists it's users are in danger.
I wish caring about your data was obvious to more people.
No one is above the law, he needs to be buried under the prison. Traitor, fraud, scumbag. Drain the Drumpf.
Then we can worry about roasting Zuckerberg on a facebook-branded spit.
Of course people need to care.
But they don't and they won't. Not so long as they get that Pavlovian response from a Like/RT/Share/Reply.
Hell, we have scores here on ./, too.
Consistency is only a virtue if you're not a screw-up.
Thanks, Tim.
I'd also like to add "Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires." Good advice all around.
What a crock of shit. Self important twat.
Says the guy with no family or friends who lives in a bunker
And what he thinks it's going to happen with the DRM extensions so hard and long pushed by corporations as much as killing net neutrality? Make all people free and wealthy? Save humanity? And never centralise and control all and everybody's internet use?
Not this imposter.
Never heard of him.
I am with him 110%. This would be the end of social media fortunes, though, they have nothing else but their misdirected efforts at advertising to carry them. I personally think Google, Facebook, and their ilk deserve every bit of the crackdown coming their way. Apple doesn't look so silly for anonymizing user data now, eh? Can't believe it's taken this long for people to wake
the eff up, and guess what? Most of the other crap Silicon Valley has tried to get us to jump on board with is equally unethical and/or Machiavellian. Ethics barely exist in the modern world of corporate tech.
"There is absolutely no reason an intelligent, ... would use those services. "
There are 2 billion people on the planet with an IQ below 85 and Facebook has 2 billion users.
Go figure.
are we talking about the same Tim Berners Lee, the one that has corporate sponsors paying him to put DRM into HTML5? why would we listen to him at all?
Exactly so. I am sorry I don't have any mod points at the moment, or I would mod you up.
Superficial, careless people notice the benefits of social media. Thoughtful, careful people are aware of the drawbacks and realise that they outweigh the benefits.
Greatly, I would say.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Says the guy whose only "friends" exist on his computer.
My friends are real. I actually hang out with them and go places with them.
Tor hidden services and VPNs mean one can build a new internet over the wreckage of the old.
Yeah, but even if IQ supposedly correlates with intelligence, also you forget that intelligence doesn't rule out stupidity and much less, lazyness.
The public behaves like sheep and demands to be treated with respect...
by wolves.
No issue better illustrates this than gun control. Millions of voters who freak out at the idea of an armed public, taking responsibility for their own safety, etc. I'm not talking ARs in every closet; I'm talking Ms. Sophisticated Urbanite who wets herself at the idea of having a tiny .38 in her purse so she can do more than claw out the eyes of a rapist. Or Mr. Soccer Mom Dad who'd never own a 9mm/.40/.45 he could carry in public or a shotgun in case his home is burgled at night. They seriously believe they should be able to outsource everything to someone else and still not be treated like wards/sheep to be sheered by bad guys and the power structure.
You want to be respected and feared as a group? You have to:
1. Care.
2. Take responsibility.
3. Be willing to do your small part to make bad guys suffer.
He thinks DRM is fine and that a guy who made billions collecting personal data can fix the web so that it serves humanity. Berners-Lee is on some excellent drugs or he's losing his marbles.
you need to learn to use the internet without letting the internet use YOU!!!
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
My IQ maybe that low and i do not use facebook.
...we can make sure platforms serve humanity.
Not as long as humanity prizes greed and avarice.
Maybe the systemic problems of the 'web' could be ameliorated by
(a) charging based on one's net data consumption - i.e. if you run a server to host content you get paid when people pull it, if you pull content you pay for it; and
(b) changing web protocols so the content receiver can query the size (and other characteristics) each component before bringing it down (or streaming it) to decide whether to pull it or not.
Maybe also -
(c) changing to decentralized protocols that somewhat protect against content ripping. (Hard - if not possible, maybe a blockchain based reputation tracking and content time-stamping system would help).
- If you post data to someone else's server, you get paid once and they get paid over and over for your content.
Most content creators and maybe most everyone would keep their own server - support for running personal servers would be much better. The 'no personal servers allowed' ISPs would quickly go broke.
- If your content is so good that your server is getting overloaded with requests, pre-negotiated contracts might shift the load to a commercial server that gets a percentage. Or maybe the web protocols inherently distribute popular content by making every server cache content for a cut of the income. That would require secure automated contracts and accounting.
I don't see how it's practical. Even if you're not a Facebook member, Facebook knows a lot about you from your IRL friends who have you in their phone contacts or tag you in photos and from logging the click stream from sites you visit that have Facebook's like button. These form what the media has referred to as a "shadow profile". And even if you use a DNS blocklist (hi APK!) to interfere with Facebook gathering your click stream, it's hard to control what members share about you.
People talk about the web like it's some new age God. If you don't like how a site acts then don't freaking use the site
I may have invented the web, but you make it what it is. And it's up to all of us to build a web that reflects our hopes & fulfils our dreams more than it magnifies our fears & deepens our divisions... Get involved. Care about your data. It belongs to you.
Unfortunately, too many people did get involved, which allowed the corporations to build a web that preys on humanity's base values: greed, fear, catering to the lowest common demoninator and social stratification.
Zuckerberg (who is really no different than a corporation) is making a shitload of money off the web that he has perverted. He has no incentive to change it.
Also, "activists, academics and web users" have no ability to make significant changes to the web against governments and corporations, all of the control is on the side of the government and corporations who own all of the infrastructure. We've even see the academic side of the web weaponized for corporate profit in the last decade (researchgate).
Evolution of the existing web will be the only real fix to this issue. And it will continue to be a cat and mouse game between academics and corporations.
but my online privacy is the least of my worries. I've got robots and H1-Bs coming for my jobs in a society where my entire quality of life depends on it. I've got no reliable access to healthcare and massively increasing drug prices. My country's fighting 8 wars and working on 9 and 10 and we just spend over half our 1.3 trillion budget on said wars. My kid's college costs keep going up and up with no end in sight. Politically I've got gerrymandering, voter suppression, dark money and rising authoritarianism. Oh, and the trade wars and Wallstreet deregulation are about to cause another economic crash...
Besides, there are way, way better ways to oppress me than reading my facebook feed. Just keep letting inflation destroy my wages and put me in a constant state of economic fear. If it's one thing that makes dictatorships easy it's economic calamity.
It's like that XKCD comic about 1024 bit encryption. They're just gonna use a wrench to beat it out of me.
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Nobody 'invented' the web. It is the logical and natural progression of computers.
He was at the right place at the right time. Claiming "I invented the web" is a bit pathetic.
This, coming from Tim Berners-Lee, who, against the principle of an open web, signed off on a DRMed HTML5, which puts control of the users' browsers the hands of media companies and content owners, distributors, and inevitably, governments and other hackers [1]. Talk about weaponizing the web.
But I digress.
Right now, the home office of Cambridge Analytica is being scoured by authorities in London, ostensibly looking for criminal activity, but actually they are trying to find out how CA did it. This sort of weapon they can use.
Social control through social media is a door of opportunity opening wide. If you're wondering where the big buck computer jobs will be, look no further. It won't just be politicians hiring either. Advertisers make big bucks for target marketing right now, and this takes it to a whole new level. The prospects look great, unless you're concerned with niggling things like privacy. In that case, remember the immortal words of Sun cofounder and CEO Scott McNealy, "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it."
[1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/...
You have a point. Sure, people can use dynamic DNS, but ISP restrictions prevent an ecosystem of peers growing naturally.
Another reason: viable decentralised social network software isn't there. I tried a couple @home social networks, including Elgg. It didn't work well.
> Tim Berners-Lee Urges Web Users: 'Care About Your Data'
The problem: we do care about our data. We care about being tracked, surveilled, patted down when taking a flight, Face ID tech, the constant hacks that make our private records public, backdoors, encryption backdoors, mini-OSes embedded on chips as another backdoor, data-mining, data-sharing, data-storage... We care but our corporate-political elite working with our propaganda-based Mainstream Media have hijacked our rights as people.
What do we do when the very core of our leadership operates with NO accountability - often outside the law itself? What do we do when voices finally rise up and they are shut down, censored, banned... for daring to speak out against a system that has overstepped any sense of decency by leaps and bounds?
Caring about our data is but one symptom to a much larger problem.
But don't talk about wanting privacy from companies and government representatives? Why not talk about the rights and the need for privacy for yourself?
I don't like how a discussion about personal information seems to be about how to handle the personal data that was preyed upon in the first place by either governments or companies.
Also I think the phrase: "we can make sure platforms serve humanity" seem disingenuous to me, as if humanity somehow owned your privacy, which is just what is wrong this this kind of thinking about 'privacy' when privacy is just a product, but not a right for everybody, but also, and more importantly, a personal need. You are supposed to be an individual, not a medieval vassal subject to "humanity" and government institutions.
They funneled that money just fine in the 80s, 90s, 00s without all that data. There was a _very_ brief respite following WWII and that's about it. Other than that and the rich have been in charge forever.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/