How about not being able to mask IP addresses, so that bad actors can hide behind a curtain of anonymity, operating systems that are designed with security in mind, and blockchain technology used for personal information security rather than mining for bitcoin. Also political ads must be either banned or approved by candidates online. When the web was purely for sharing research and messages between individuals, it was safe and promising, but leave it to humans and corporations to monetize everything and ruin it. We need to reboot the web, like turning on and off a personal computer which would erase all our personal info and start over.
52
When I used to post on FB, I uploaded a picture from Redwood NP one time, hardly difficult to get to and take. Someone commented asking where I found the picture on the Web.
People need to get outside more and discover, not World without Borders, but Places without Reception. It's good for the soul.
14
I'm confused. Facebook is mentioned here by name as a supporter of this contract, yet Zuckerberg is on record as refusing to disallow false information and advertising on the platform.
He has reportedly been cozying up to Trump and his propaganda machine- how can this be taken seriously if there's such cynical dishonesty on the part of the participants?
80
I fully support your endeavors. However, please note that the web is serving humanity. To put it simply, not all humans are nice people. We can now go online and surround ourselves with billions of strangers. It should not be a surprise that bad behavior sometimes results.
When we are only limited by our imagination, that also means the dark ideas from our imagination can also exist without limits. You seek rules so that our worst impulses are restrained, and that is sensible.
35
This is what happens when a respected technical person is asked, or volunteers, to say something on behalf of humanity: platitudes.
2
Hideo Kojima's warning!
#Deathstranding
1
Remove the anonymity. Every single user must be tied to a real and verified name that can be resolved with little effort.
A WWW passport. While not a perfect analogy it's a beginning.
124
@Jon joseph: Removing anonymity could certainly rein in the bad guys, but what about people living under authoritarian regimes, whose life and liberty we would sacrifice? What about women who, once identified, are doxed and subjected to threats of torture and rape after posting something someone disagrees with?
There's a proud tradition of anonymity in America, from the Federalist Papers and the secret ballot to the aliases most of us use here. I'm not willing to throw that baby out with the bathwater.
23
@Jon joseph I live in Rep. Jim Jordan's Ohio District 4 that is gerrymandered into the shape of a 5. I believe I would be a victim of physical violence if my name was available to those who do not agree with my point of view.
You are another clueless male who offers his "perfect" solution.
7
@Retired RN: As a PhD in physics with minors in neuroscience and computer science, raised in the home of a US ambassador and sibling to a sister murdered by a handgun not sure how clueless I am.
And I agree, the issue is hard to resolve. Like gun control. Once the guns hit the street it is very hard to undo that. Since the web was spawned with anonymity at its core it would be hard to reign it back in.
But to deny its pernicious influence is to give the Russian government a free pass.
3
I think you underestimate the pervasiveness of evil. I suspect that self-interest at the expense of others is an evolutionary process that served well millions of years ago, but acts at the detriment of society today and may well destroy civilization as we know it.
3
TBL, you are 25 years too late. Paraphrasing the great Knick Michael Ray Richardson, "the ship be sunk." All the good intentions in the world are not going to raise it now.
2
While I agree with the premise that the online community needs to take better care of itself, the Internet is not the problem. I look at the internet as "digtial dial tone". Telephones are communication devices, you can call for food or for sex, the phone doesn't know the difference and the carrier just connects you. You can arrange a play date or meet with a bad person.
The Internet or World Wide Web is the connector. Facebook sells your data not the internet. Most people do not understand that mobile APPS are no different that speed dial. Using an app bypasses a browser and connects the user directly to a service. Thats not the Internet. the internet is the transport that connects the app or allows one service to communication with another. All these Apps and services are for-profit businesses using the Internet to communicate. No different than a credit card company using a phone line to retrieve a card and transaction information from a merchant to approve the transaction. Now this is done using an internet connection. It's still only a connection.
Inventing the Web as a new form of communication was brilliant. Is there an owner to the Internet? Are the carriers responsible for how its customers use the Internet? SHOULD the carriers be responsible for how its customers use the Internet? The NY TImes curates what it publishes, why shouldn't FaceBook - its not a law its a responsibility.
4
Mr. Berners-Lee: the elephant in the room, and ominously so in your proposal, is anonymity. As along as any person or entity can hide in plain sight on the internet, shielded by the very nature of IP addressing, then no one else is safe from malign actors. As long as nobody knows you're a dog, then nobody knows you're a bot, a scammer, a predator, a stooge for a foreign state, or an honest individual. Fix that if you want to fix the internet.
1
Thanks to the web, “friend” no longer means what it used to.
2
As best I can discern Mr. Berners-Lee, the primary users of the internet today are Amazon.com and its competitors and providers of porn.
If you had a chance to start all over again today and alter what can and cannot go up there, would you?
1
... the primary users and beneficiaries of the internet today are Amazon.com and its competitors and providers of porn.
1
I'd like to see several new choices added for responses to Facebook and Twitter posts. 1. a bot suspected or fake news icon. Fake news cannot be applied to a reputable news organization (like this one) but would be available for those online publications that cannot meet certain criteria.
1
You can fix 90% of the Web's problems with 2 simple fixes:
1. Stop the promotion of anonymous speech. Anonymous speech is NOT free speech. Free speech comes with responsibility, like slander and libel and not shouting 'fire'in a crowded theater. Force Internet Providers to 'know their customers' like banks and other financial services already do as required by law. Make trolls legally discoverable and responsible for their actions.
2. Ban Bots. The internet is for people but for the past few years the amount of internet traffic by people is less than 50%. As I write this my browser is blocking 28 trackers, including Facebook which I quit over 3 years ago. Why is this constant surveillance legal? Who does it serve? What does it contribute to society that it should be protected by law?
These are 2 simple, easy to implement steps that IMHO would clean up 90% of the internet problems.
4
"1. Stop the promotion of anonymous speech."
That would expose people who express disliked ideas to harassment. It could even endanger their lives.
BTW, if your proposal is such a great idea, why are you posting under initials and without a location: "JMC Lost and confused"?
4
@JMC There is nothing wrong with trolls. Only something wrong with someone who is so thoroughly addicted and takes the internet so seriously that they can't tell when someone is messing with them. From what I've seen, the only people who should be using the internet are the trolls. Everyone else is trying to vomit their political opinions, craft the perfect image, say some inspiration and vapid nonsense etc and overall engaging in a twisted and fake version of reality.
The bigger problem is social media itself.
"The use of targeted political ads in the United States’ 2020 presidential campaign and in elections elsewhere threatens once again to undermine voters’ understanding and choices."
Campaigns have used targeted ads for many decades. Suggesting this is a bad thing is ridiculous. Targeting ads doesn't undermine any voter's choice -- they still get a ballot with every candidate/measure on it. Targeting ads allows candidates without deep pockets to conserve resources.
What, for example, is wrong with a Democratic Presidential candidate targeting ads in purple states and not wasting money on ads in deep red states? Or that same candidate focusing their "get out the vote" ads on young people (who tend to require more prodding to vote vs. older voters) or black voters (another demographic group that strongly votes for Democrats but often has low turnout)?
If you're a Republican, you probably see fewer ads in your USPS mailbox for Democrats in the primary season than for Republicans (and, vice versa). Why should any candidate waste resources courting and informing people not interested in the message or who can't vote?
Eliminating targeting will also increase the din of ads and cause many voters to tune out more.
If we can't trust voters to seek out ever more easily available (thanks to the internet) information, can we trust them to vote responsibly at all? I think not.
If the U.S. had made a full-on commitment to this essential undertaking under President Obama, Prof. Berners-Lee would be writing now to forestall the current administration’s intent to abandon the whole thing. As it is, we can hope the presidency will return to someone dedicated to serving the public good, next year.
On the business side, I think this wording is apt: "The tech giants Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Reddit sit alongside other specialists such as the search engine DuckDuckGo in committing to action.” How do we get those companies up and off their duffs with that commitment?
As far as end users are concerned, I’m tempted to say, forget it - convenience will trump principle every time. But I’m thinking about the increasing numbers of people who take reusable shopping bags to the grocery now, so maybe my cynicism is unwarranted.
Now for one narrow, concrete suggestion: Practically every Internet application and transaction requires us to agree instantly to a unique, opaque tome of terms crafted by an army of legal experts over time. That situation has to be addressed, urgently. Draft proposal: The government, representing the people, would develop a set of standard clauses. Of course, publish those for discussion, accept input from all parties, take the time to get it right. Then require all online “agreements” to be assembled using that approved language. License the privilege of offering such agreements online and revoke the license for non-compliance.
3
I think that one should look at technical aspects of redesigning the internet to make some of the misuses more difficult. It was originally designed as a military system intended to preserve command and control during an atomic war, so its chief design criterion was survivability of messages--they should be able to get through no matter what failed. No attention was paid to traceability or authentication of origins. A great many of the misuses are due to the ability to be anonymous. Surely there are technical steps one could take to make hacking and spoofing more difficult. Telephone systems used to have this characteristic--calls were tracable--although that has now been lost due to the web-ization of the phone system.
The inventor of the world-wide-web should have a little more to offer than an effort at a voluntary multi-actor contract, which of course the worst actor will avoid joining.
it is just a system that is ahead of its time unfortunately. a good idea but that is bout it. an idea nothing else. it has become an uncontrollable monster.
Yes. We must close Pandora's box.
Good grief.
@Passion for Peaches had objections to preventing apps from keeping a person's jogging route private.
"... I was bothered by the sexism in this statement: “...why on an exercise app should women have to worry that their precise jogging routes are shared ..."
Come on. The reality that women are more vulnerable to attacks cannot be ignored.
Your objection is beyond nitpicking. It is disingenuous.
"Your objection is beyond nitpicking. It is disingenuous."
Sir Tim's sexism should be called out.
Robbers, thieves, kidnappers, and assassins could use fitness trackers to target people.
And he seems to have completely missed the threat to national security posed by fitness trackers:
Strava Fitness App Can Reveal Military Sites, Analysts Say
By Richard Pérez-Peña and Matthew Rosenberg
Jan. 29, 2018
New York Times
Fantastic! I loved the world wide web when it first appeared for all the reasons it began; I have been tremendously disappointed in how it turned into a sell anything, to anyone, for any purpose, including the truth, kind of place. I have been feeling quite hopeless about it and Mr. Berners-Lee, along with his foundation, give me reason to hope for light at the end of this frustrating, demoralizing tunnel.
Thank you -
Jennifer Justice
1
"... it turned into a sell anything, to anyone, for any purpose, ..."
Nope. Law enforcement goes after people using the internet for illegal "purposes":
Ross Ulbricht, Creator of Silk Road Website, Is Sentenced to Life in Prison
By Benjamin Weiser
May 29, 2015
New York Times
@Jennifer Justice
You are free to ignore ads or only visit web sites that don't have them or pay for "no ad" access to sites that off such an subscription option.
Did you not read newspapers or watch TV or listen to radio before the internet became available to you? They all had massive advertising (with the arguable exception of PBS/NPR - but they had increasingly long "We would like to thank our sponsor BigCorpFoundation" messages which were just ads in disguise).
You are free to buy things locally and, if you need something not available locally, to call around to vendors and order by phone -- heck, you can even try to figure out how to send them a paper check and they will send the product when the check clears if that makes you feel more "old timesy".
I, and others, like to be able to order products from a vast palette without having to drive hundreds of miles going from store to store to see what they have -- and discovering most don't have something suitable available.
In short, why do you care how other people use the internet? You are free to make your own choices, don't suggest others shouldn't. You can choose not to use the internet at all or only use it to access governmental sites.
Berners-Lee may have created the World Wide Web. However, he didn't come up with a funding plan that would give a free walled garden to all who wanted it without charge and presenting only viewpoints they agreed with. Without ads most sites couldn't survive.
Relying on human beings to do the right thing is a futile effort, particularly where money is involved. Corruption, hate and power follow the dollars and there are many, many dollars to be skimmed off the internet. Look for the situation to get much worse than the present; and to continue a slide into more racism, misogyny, bigotry of all stripes, general hate and advocacy to violence. Such is human nature.
Unfortunately, it's already too late for this. Berners-Lee, Jobs, Brin, Zuckerberg, et. al have unleashed a monster and created a dystopian world (albeit unwittlingly) where no privacy exists, money and celebrity are the only values, and people walk around like zombies staring at their mobile phones.
3
@Retorheft
You don't need to use Apple products. You don't need to use Google. You don't need to use Facebook. Actually, you don't need to use any commercial site on the internet (you can still access government sites for convenience).
I rarely use Apple (only when a employer gives me an Apple product to use), I tend to use DuckDuckGo for my search engine rather than Google. I never post on Facebook although I do occasionally lurk.
True, I often see targeted ads on free sites if they require me to turn my ad blocker off. That's my choice though - if the ads get _too_ annoying I just stop visiting it, their potential loss and my certain gain.
I wasn't required to read the local ad supported newspaper and I'm not required to visit their ad supported web site now.
I know many sites share what I'm shopping for -- but I can often use TOR or alternate identities if that bothered me (I really don't care, but it is somewhat annoying to see ads for toner cartridges for weeks because I looked at them on several vendor sites over the course of 15 minutes).
This seems like seeking a return to a nostalgic time that actually hadn't existed for decades before the web became popular.
So, toxic digital polluters like Facebook get to sign up to your contract, and only get removed later if they don't perform. How much later? Two, three, four years? Years of free marketing while they pay lip service and continue to subvert personal privacy and democracy? Sorry, Mr Berners-Lee - your goals may be noble but you undermine it all when you place the logo of a serial web malefactor on your site. Organisations should have to EARN the right to place their logo next to yours. And the bench marks for earning that right should be commensurate with their past offending.
4
Amend u.s. constitution to make net access an inalienable right: neither government nor corps should be able to deny citizens the right to gather and share information online no matter what the circumstances. Freedom of expression, the right to hater peaceably.
@Andrew McGall
I'm not aware of any government in the US preventing anyone from accessing the web (with the exception of prisoners, parolees, or sex offenders).
Why bother to amend the Constitution to "solve" a non-existent problem? The First Amendment pretty much covers it already anyway.
You or your business (incorporated or not) are free to put up a web site or post on other web sites that allow you to -- the government doesn't get in the way.
As far as corporations... If NYT couldn't deny you (and me) access to gather information from their web site without buying a subscription, how would they pay reporters, editors, comment section moderators, and hosting costs? Perhaps by ads? But, then people complain about "targeted ads" -- which print newspapers did all the time. An advertiser could buy ads in just particular editions or in particular sections -- all ad targeting.
1
Need to reread this piece because Mr. Berners-Lee's work and views deserve it. But the answer to many of the problems facing the Web is simple. Amazon and Facebook need to be broken up and Twitter needs to be turned into a public utility. As Kojak used to say, "like that." It won't fix the Web but its a start.
1
I applaud the idea presented here but frankly you may as well put forth an initiative for how all people can come together and act nicely so we have no more wars. My point here is that all the actors in the proposed contract have agendas - some want to preserve competitive positions, some want to preserve political power, some want to spread human rights and some I am sure would like to restrict human rights.
The ills facing the web are just the ills of humanity magnified and focused into one technology. If we can solve one, we can solve the other but history has shown that humans are far too tribal and self-focused to come together in grand world visions. If we cannot come together to solve the existential problem of global warming, why would people be ready to come together to fix the internet?
1
Every tool, from fire to the Internet, has been established with noble purposes and then been misused by some nefarious people. Tool are amoral, users are moral or immoral. Please stop blaming the tool for the uses it is put to.
This contract is another noble concept, and it would help if adopted. It would help even more if, after adoption, it were followed but like all human endeavors, there will be those who will ignore or subvert it.
Since anyone can now instantly "self-publish" their thoughts to a possible enormous audience and since there or no editors to screen what goes direct to the public, maybe we should get rid of the anonymous part. If people really believe their words, they should be willing to use their actual name. Also, maybe some of the petty meanness and name calling might be reduced if a person couldn't hide behind a fake name.
1
@Barry
That's counter to the historical precedent. Probably the most quoted opinion papers regarding the creation of our current political system are the Federalist Papers -- all of which were published anonymously (although, over the years we have now figured out who probably wrote each of them).
Banning anonymity in public forums is unwise. Suppose you supported LGBT rights 30 years ago and worked and lived in a very religious "backwoods" place. Would you have been willing to become a pariah in your own community and find that no one would hire you because you had to express your views under your own name?
Due to campaign finance laws that require, wrongly in my view, public disclosure of donors, I simply don't donate to political campaigns. Thus, the very disclosure rules are, themselves, inhibiting my free expression (I prefer to outsource some of my expression as I can't afford to build an entire private internet that reaches all the world and build and maintain the sites to promote my views directly).
If a site's moderators and TOS don't deal with "meanness" and "name calling" (neither of which hurt you), in a way you like, just ignore such speech or seek out a site which does deal with such speech in a way you would like. There are plenty of such sites so vote with your feet and let me do the same.
Spoofing, phishing, masquerading, deception and spreading viruses are the biggest problems. Yet the fix seems relatively simple. Add a requirement that a valid country code be included in the packet header and that nodes starting with the very first reject any packets without the correct one for the link involved. For companies and individuals that means their traffic onto the web has to have the country code for their location. Going across borders it means that appended to the header must be the correct code for the country on the other end of the link. And enforcement would mean forcibly shutting off noncompliant links. Prune the web of the bad actors. No more calls from Nigeria or Costa Rica or India pretending to be the IRS. Because it is in the header it would be a byte of clear text. So tracing crime would be much easier.
2
Unintended Consequence
2
Too bad no one cared to clean up the internet and web in the 1990s, when it was fixable and the worst issues were sex trafficking and porn. That's still a foundational pillar globally, so don't expect any fixes for those crimes or all the others that mutated like a fungus on the forest floor.
It will be easy to ban disinformation because many will volunteer to extirpate opinions they know to be detestable.
For example, there’s a Dr. Atkins who threatens public health, misinforming millions by dismissing the danger of artery clogging dietary fat. And there are those doctor guys in Australia who claim that microbes cause stomach ulcers, an idea rejected by every authority.
1
@Charlierf I fear that too many readers won't get your post without a tag at the end.
The web has become an instrument of terror for so many individuals. The technology CEO's are making money hand over fist by stealing private information and selling it to third parties. The internet ,allows true devils to hide behind false names and there is no accountability for their hate.
Technology companies have posted false information, failed to remove sexual predators,pictures. The human population has become a victim to the people being the curtain. All the time the tech CEO's are laughing at the human race.
This article is full of noble ideas, however the reality is Facebook is a symbol of greed, arrogance and inhumanity, Amazon, google are enablers for dictators Technology was happily sold to dictators to spy on the people, Yahoo, Facebook etc needed the clicks for more shareholder revenue.
It is apparent that the human good that technology was to suppose to bring missed the correct highway to get on. We have the hateful technology being implemented by greedy capitalists Children being bullied, committing suicide, medical records, facial recognition are on line no matter what. Why, for financial gain and power for the CEO's .
We are a country of spies who monitor free thought and everything you do. The Nazi's paid people to spy on people who were different from them, not anymore, check your phone and your movements are being monitored.
Even behind the drapes Echo is sending your private conversations to the AI system behind the curtain.
1
What we need is an army of behavioral scientists who understand tech. Academics publishing articles specifically addressing how most technology suffers from a "well, duh" blindness. I'm not thinking psychologists or social workers either. Put the microscope down.
I'm talking about broad patterns of human behavior that are easily predictable when interacting with technology. Any technology.
I remember studying this ancient rock outcropping as an archaeologist once. Nobody understood how it was possibly used. That's until a bunch of modern teenagers lit a fire on the hill to show their friends where the party was at. A sort of ancient fiery billboard saying, "Exit Here." Well, duh.
The internet operates the same way. The problem is we aren't transparent about how humans behave while using the internet. Facebook and Netflix and all these other companies lock down their understanding of human behavior on the internet. They do it for profit. More accurately, they do it for commercialization. Most tech companies aren't actually profitable.
More to the point though, researchers get employed to research all this stuff but in secreted silos. Places where industry intelligence nod and wink at each other but never truly share the data. I'm looking at you Google. Talent gets farmed away from public interest because, well, ultimately the talent is making money for someone. Your metric determines your interest. Talent follows the metric.
Well, duh
What we need is a reverse incentive.
"Nobody understood how it [an ancient rock outcropping] was possibly used."
Experimental archaeology may have progressed since then. See, for example, the work of British archaeologist Jacqui Wood.
"The problem is we aren't transparent about how humans behave while using the internet."
Not exactly. Intel employs an anthropologist:
"Dr. [Genevieve] Bell’s title at Intel ... is director of user experience research at Intel Labs, the company’s research arm. She runs a skunk works of some 100 social scientists and designers who travel the globe, observing how people use technology in their homes and in public."
Intel’s Sharp-Eyed Social Scientist
By Natasha Singer
Feb. 15, 2014
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/technology/intels-sharp-eyed-social-scientist.html
"Make the internet affordable and accessible to everyone" is a key principle, but the specifics do not go far enough. TBL himself stated the need a year ago:
"Today’s powerful digital economy calls for strong standards that balance the interests of both companies and online citizens. This means thinking about how we align the incentives of the tech sector with those of users and society at large…
"Two myths currently limit our collective imagination: the myth that advertising is the only possible business model for online companies, and the myth that it’s too late to change the way platforms operate. On both points, we need to be a little more creative.
"…Create a new set of incentives and changes in the code will follow. We can design a web that creates a constructive and supportive environment."
The Contract should include a new Financial Contract to align incentives to benefit not only Web platforms, but users. Require that user pay at a level that corresponds to the value they get and their ability to pay - shift from the zero-sum game of "artificial scarcity" to fair sharing our digital abundance with both service providers and each consumer. That will also shift from the extraction of attention and data to transparently negotiating how advertising and commerce should serve both service providers and each consumer. As published in Techonomy, "Information Wants to be Free; Consumers May Want to Pay," and "To Regulate Facebook and Google, Turn Users Into Customers."
Tim, what you are doing is great.
But I wish you would not claim credit for stuff you did not do. You did invent HTTP, which is used by this web page.
But for most people "the world wide web" includes email which you did not invent. The world wide web includes the mechanisms whereby web pages can find each other i.e. the totally amazing DNS, which you also did not invent, and the mechanisms that allow the web to transfer files (TCP/IP) also a totally amazing piece of work.
Like Newton when he was alluding to Christ, you stood on the shoulders of giants. Please credit them, its not hard.
“Not too late” for the web “to serve humanity?” It’s waaaaayyyyy too late.
1
Mr Pollyanna ... seriously? When the ‘Powers-that-Be’ use so many ‘doors’, I.e., backdoors, front doors, side doors, trapdoors, etc., why are we to think THEY will ‘fess up’ & ‘come clean’ ... ‘For the good of Humanity’? Without a basic Document to, not only compel but to punish ... ‘non compliance’, what path is there before us to signal or indicate a result that is sufficiently, dare I say, significantly different than what we have presently? Believe me, I’m not one to criticize simply because I can, but please, put some ‘Meat’ on these bones ... we don’t need another ‘Wish Sandwich’!
Too late.
1
Intelligent, well-conceived government regulation of the web--especially social media--is crucial.
In the 1960s, except for some big businesses, computing was only for the R&D crowd, mainly government and universities. I was on the CDC6600 supercomputer at UT Austin at the time. Then to facilitate information exchange beyond our then new time sharing computing, we connected a few remote sites using phone lines, discovering all sorts of unforeseen side effects. As networking grew, at first only R&D sites were connected, but eventually other users were allowed on the network. Big sites, like CERN, where Tim was, still had the information search and sharing problem. Along came Tim's WWW. After letting the public on the Internet, once again unforeseen side effects appeared - IMHO WWW good, twitter and Facebook BAD. Now other manipulations of these general purpose communications tools take us into the unknown. Is it a horse without a bridle? Are we on a bus without a driver?? Can we tame it ??? before ti hurts us ????
1
Lawsuits are effective change agents. Unless there is a way to sue some one posting on the internet deliberate lies, propaganda and vicious misinformation, the internet will continue to be a cesspool of deceit. And it will only get worse. Newspapers can be sued. That’s one reason they are careful about how they report news and especially what is allowed on their opinion and commentary pages.
1
@BS
The salient point is there is no way to globally change and regulate the web now, even less so with the internet.
The internet is responsible for 10% of the carbon dioxide overload. The World Wide Web changed what was a rather controlled environment, where only people with a certain degree of expertise could utilize the internet into a free-for-all with no control or entrance requirements. If you want to see what the internet used to be like, visit the dark web (if you know how) and you will two things, the dark underbelly of world culture, and a pristine environment where people go about their business without ever coming into contact with the nefarious elements on the dark web.
Tim Berners-Lee could never have foreseen what his invention would cause but it now seems that he is unable to acknowledge the World Wide Web's role in enabling bad actors to infiltrate the common carrier we all use all the time.
It is ironic that we are carrying on this conversation through the world wide web over the internet to "connect" with people with whom we have absolutely nothing else in common.
This has never happened before in human history. It may also be the end of human history as we know it.
How is Facebook a supporter for the "Contract for the Web" when they're responsible for the spread in fake news and political propaganda?
@Ash
Because this is effectively asking the wolf to guard the henhouse. The article, as an assumption (and one I agree with) emphasizes that corporations, politicians, and others have effectively broken the web. And its solution is for them to get together to create new rules for the web. It's not hard to guess who those rules are going to favor.
This is late, very late in fact. Many have been calling for effective internet regulation throughout the last two decades of rapid online "innovation" that did little but create robber barons, devalue truth, and empower creeps, thieves, and mass murderers. As we demanded regulation -- like with Europe's single digital market directive -- we were fought by most of the early signatories here -- Google, Facebook, the EFF, oh and Tim Berners-Lee himself.
Now the robber barons generously agree to sign a non-binding "contract" to do better, and somehow the creeps, and thieves and murderers will just volunteer to stop being what they are?
But wait, does this contract even mention the widespread thievery of creative content that has filled bank vaults for a handful of companies? Does it even address fair pay for professional creators? Of course not. It leans heavily on a call for "open" content, which is how the web all but destroyed the cultural economy in the first place.
This looks a whole lot like the builder of a collapsed bridge asking of we could all please agree to rebuild the same bridge, only with smiley faces on it.
5
I guess "fixing the internet" is right up there with "world peace" and the Doomsday Clock. Good luck.
1
Can't get the genie back into the bottle? We care about STEM, not people.
How odd that he avoids mentioning the ugliest depths of the dark web. Of course it is awful and dangerous that our personal data is constantly being collated, to be sorted, bundled and sold. But we know that is so when we use electronic devices. That’s always been the trade off for accessing the web. Of course the manipulation of political campaigns, by planting false information online, is a terrible thing. But I don’t read the blogs where that stuff resides. It’s up to voters to make the effort to sort fact from fiction. Be skeptical. Think.
What concerns me far more than the above is the use of the worldwide web as a tool for trading in child porn, human trafficking, images of the most disgusting kinds of abuse of both humans and animals, videos of executions and torture, and so on. The most vile and horrifying aspects of humanity reside and thrive in the dark corners of the web. That is where I want to see strict control imposed. Currently it is a nightmare, and innocents are suffering. Perhaps there should be an international effort toward cleaning up the web from the bottom up, not from the top down.
On a side note, I was bothered by the sexism in this statement: “...why on an exercise app should women have to worry that their precise jogging routes are shared by default with other users? Perhaps because they were designed by people not thinking about the safety needs of women.” Such real-time tracking is dangerous for all genders.
1
@Passion for Peaches
"... I was bothered by the sexism in this statement: “...why on an exercise app should women have to worry that their precise jogging routes are shared ..."
Come on. The reality that women are more vulnerable to attacks cannot be ignored.
Your objection is beyond nitpicking. It is disingenuous.
1
"Such real-time tracking is dangerous for all genders."
Exactly. Robbers, thieves, kidnappers, and assassins could use such tracking to target people.
Sir Tim should have looked at the bigger picture, which includes the threat to national security posed by fitness trackers:
Strava Fitness App Can Reveal Military Sites, Analysts Say
By Richard Pérez-Peña and Matthew Rosenberg
Jan. 29, 2018
New York Times
2
I thought Al Gore was the inventor of the World Wide Web.
.
He said so.
"Success has many fathers"
@HH
Why did you even bother with that silly comment?
Al Gore never said he invented the internet. Gore most certainly understood even in the late 1970s and 1980s the vision of telecommunications. As senator, he helped pave the way while ion the Senate for funding measures and programs for academics and private enterprise to interface with vast government processes in order to collaborate and create. Speed of data transfer was always problematic.
See: Gore's passage of the 1991 High Performance Computing and Communications Act.
@Maggie
Gore made an attempt to take undue credit for establishing the internet.
That's what was silly.
I'd propose a few more principles:
Governments
Commit to not using the Inet it as a weapon of war.
Hold its citizens accountable to the truth.
Uphold freedom of speech.
Companies
Return ownership of our digital identities to the citizens.
Citizens
Demand open access as a fundamental right.
The "Web that We Want", according to TimBL, is one that continues the hegemony of the Web's hegemons. The "Contract" is very very establishment, and I find it uncompelling, to put it mildly. It's not even a contract; it's a bunch of rhetoric designed to prevent a much-needed *real* Mayflower compact among the public at large, as well as to pour even more concrete around the hegemonies of the pipe-owners and the big web-services-owners. (I'm reminded of a famous remark about the role of 20th-century Christian churches, that their real purpose was to immunize Christians against having any *real* religious experiences.)
The web that I want is one in which the public interest is paramount. In which there are serious disincentives for violating the privacy of anyone else. In which there are serious disincentives for lying, and serious incentives for truth-telling. In which there are no one-way mirrors through which the hegemons can exploit knowledge of the public that is unavailable to the public itself. If we can get there, everybody wins, and everything else follows.
Tim's plan is evidently to protect the interests of the hegemons so that they will feel safe enough to grant the public such concessions as may be necessary to keep up appearances, perhaps out of some sense of noblesse oblige.
2
I concur with the litany of internet horrors mentioned here.
But here's the other side: watching interviews of great minds, writers, artists, philosophers, old black & white films made by masters of cinema (& nowhere else available to watch), biographies, histories, how to bake an apple pie, how to fix something (be it tech or an an analog gadget), how to knit & sew, how to....the list is endless. This is the GLORY of the internet: any person can educate himself/herself better than in a 4-year college. Everyone has the possibility of becoming an autodidact ---which is exactly the way the Ben Franklins of the world (among many other great minds) received an education (no money needed, just an insatiable lifetime curiosity). The internet is the GREATEST ACCESSIBLE UNIVERSITY.
1
It’s hard to take this seriously with Google and Facebook as signatories. Wouldn’t this contract, if implemented as described, cut directly into Google and Facebook’s data capture and resell model?
If they wanted, Google and Facebook could solve today, right now, a lot of the privacy issues the contract wants to solve. If they are in favor of the contract, why don’t they just do it now themselves?
2
I hope your efforts to combat "disinformation" doesn't come at the cost of eliminating news elites may not like.
After all, under the system you're advocating for, someone like Prince Andrew, given his political connections, would call any story about him and Jeffrey Epstein "disinformation." As the killing of reporting on the Prince Andrew story by ABC News has already indicated, there seems to be plenty of mainstream news org push back on stories their elite paymasters don't like. So, quite frankly, instituting some sort of "disinformation" law would only play more into their hands.
This is a dangerous and anti-democratic approach. We already have libel and slander laws. Use them if you don't like what's being published. Otherwise, take your lumps.
4
The idea of "eradicate incentives that reward clickbait or the spread of disinformation." to me seems like the answer.
I say make Social Media a "pay for access" service. Quit with the click-bait advertising. To me, that would take care of a huge percentage of the problem.
2
After grazing the comments, I note that the Luddites are not only still around, but they are proud of their beliefs.
Rather than seek out solutions or even bothering to help, they grind their teeth, pound on the desk, and wish a return to an idealized past, one that has no chance of resurrection.
So, how is that working out?
2
Why do the words 'stable door' and 'bolted' come to mind?
1
Talk is cheap.
Times: "Sir Berners-Lee is a co-founder of the World Wide Web Foundation."
The correct usage is "Sir Tim" or "Sir Tim Berners-Lee".
Editors should review the "Sir" entry in the Times's style book.
@VGP
A facet of the internet from Day One was the grammar police. Some things never change.
Looking at https://contractfortheweb.org/ and the juxtaposition of:
Companies - Principle 5
Respect and protect people’s privacy and personal data to build online trust
- Principle 6
Develop technologies that support the best in humanity and challenge the worst
and 'supporter' companies such as Facebook and Google which don't adhere to these principles right no
"In my view, governments should impose an immediate ban on targeted political advertising to restore trust in our public discourse."
How would this ever work with a first amendment right to free speech, but when that speech is political (the most required form of free to speak) it has limits that preclude trying to reach a particular audience?
2
He didn't invent the Internet. and WWW is just an add-on to the internet. The internet was designed to have no central control, which is why it has proliferated.
Old fogeys might recall when there were actually "competitors" to the internet, like Minitel in France. They failed because they lacked the Wild West freedom of the internet. But the same thing that made the internet popular is now causing chaos. You really can't have one without the other I'm afraid.
1
This is great and needed more than ever.
Citizens who care about our democracy -- delete your Facebook account and other social media platforms that knowingly spread lies for the sake of profit.
1
Ain't happenin'.
Let's turn the microphone over to Cormac McCarthy, who wrote about all this and more before the Web in Blood Meridian:
"These scenes and scenes like them were repeated night after night. The citizenry made address to the governor but he was much like the sorcerer's apprentice who could indeed provoke the imp to do his will but could in no way make him cease again."
1
Mr. Berners-Lee may be a good scientist, but he is a lousy politician who lacks a real sense of what his "invention" created. This statement is the tell: "...ensure that their rights are protected through effective regulation and enforcement..." by the greatest threat to individual freedom--government. Most of which do not really believe that their citizens should be able to say whatever they want, whenever they want. Ghana signed on to free-speech--who are you kidding?
Government censors always get their foot in the door with the most egregious examples of untrammeled speech--and, of course, protecting women is always up there on the list. But it never stops there, as any reading of history ought to convince Mr. Berners-Lee and his acolytes. That mega-web corporations have signed on to this Contract is the most alarming part of his sermon--Google!! Of course they'll sign on, and use the Contract's fine print to further stifle competition and threatening start-ups. Why, if they're talking directly to other humans--ban 'em!
1
Too bad you studied so much math you omitted basic sociology and insight into all human nature, not just collegiate professionals in ivory towers. You should understand more about people from all walks of life, how inequality and instability foments anger, and an unregulated tool like this could be used to lead to corruption and disaster.
Web is the most expensive free product we ever had.
3
Keeping FB and GOOG and AMZN out should be the first order of business.
Agreed. The one thing you did not take into account Mr. Berners-Lee is human nature. Unchecked it can go in ultra self serving directions. Time indeed to reign it in, sir. Where do we all sign?
Nice. As soon as Russia and China sign this contract I will start paying attention again.
2
Two words: read Areopagitica. A few more words: read the first amendment. Action plan: retire with the inventor of the wheel, and you both can trade stories about good and bad uses of your inventions into the sunset....
1
Nice idea, but too late.
1
What you've discovered too late Sir Berners-Lee is that as complex as computers are, human nature is much more complex and far less predictable. What you propose as a solution is too little, too late. The time for this Contract was at the beginning, that ship has sailed. There are too many people, and too many powerful interests, vested in how the web works today for them to ever agree to what you suggest. Your noble. altruistic intentions went the way of all intentions - on the road to hell.
If there is any solution, I think it might come from the creation of an alternative, competing web that has the safeguards you want already in place. This Alt Web would be built to provide faster responses, and ideally would not allow all the clutter from ads and other trash that drags down performance and enjoyment. It would be a User-driven web where users are in complete control of the content they get, not forced to accept all the digital detritus we have to suffer on every page we access.
I don't know if such a web is possible, but if it is, I believe most people would abandon the current web in an instant and thus solve the problem you're trying to resolve. Given the obvious brilliance and creativity you possess, I hope you can harness that in this new direction.
1
Technology is essentially neutral; Humans are not. If Humans are to use Technology, they will use it to amplify what they would want to do without Technology.
Some of us want nothing better than to harass, intimidate, and misbehave more with less, or better yet no, consequences.
Thanks Tim for a great tool.
Worry about Humans a little less. We will always disappoint.,
1
Another way in which Trump is hurting the whole world. Everyone is focused on him and his corruption rather than this important world-wide endeavor. Mr. Berners-Lee is asking us to make this a political issue in our country by acting like involved citizens and tell our representatives that we want action. It's the least we can do to defend ourselves from those that would take us down by using these tools.
66
@SC Mr Trump is enabled in this by the company that hosts his favorite means of communicating. Clearly they fear the repercussions of cutting him off. I would say, though, that despite the economic repercussions, doing so would do the world a big favor.
16
@SC By claiming everything is Trump's fault, the key issues we have with Trump get lost. And, people get annoyed with the left crying wolf. Perhaps, some of us are just too distracted by and obsessed with Trump to pull back and refocus on the other important issues we are all facing today. That would be our own faults.
5
@SC Stop blaming Trump for everything. The U.S. was on a decline in many ways and Trump helped shed light on our problems albeit not in the most traditional political ways. Things are moving very fast because of the internet and people are not focused on the right matters for solving problems.
3
"I had hoped that 30 years from its creation, we would be using the web foremost for the purpose of serving humanity."
Mr. Berners-Lee succeeded in his ambition. People are using the Internet (I hesitate to use the term "Web" anymore) to do what they've been doing for countless millennia: harassing, exploiting and even enslaving others. They're using it to form tribes, just as our ancestors did, and they're making war on other tribes through it. They're using it for self-aggrandizement, just as Kings, Khans, Tsars, Caesars and yes, Presidents did by other means.
This isn't some freakish occurrence. It's what we are as a species, amplified.
91
@Daedalus You can't use the internet and the Web interchangeable. Berners-Lee did not invent the internet, and the internet is actually the issue here: it was designed to have no central control, which is why it became popular and also why it is causing chaos now. Without that chaos-causing freedom, there would have been no internet and afterwards, no Web.
The internet had no original purpose, other than I guess DARPA wanting to use it to facilitate military research in the 1960s. But that was just a goal, not a philosophy. The internet has no founding philosophy other than: Go Crazy.
8
@nerdrage Spare me the nerdsplaining. I know full well what the difference is, how the Web is related to older concepts such as hypertext, Gopher and Veronica. But Mr. B-L can't fully be blamed for rogue javascript and binaries, for monopolistic search engines, for massive data sinks and echo chambers. Had the Web stayed with his original designs, we wouldn't be where we are.
12
@Daedalus
And drugs were never meant to be abused. ...right.
I was not a big Cobain fan, but one lyric he got just right is, "all we are is all we are" and the web/internet proves that every minute of every day.
4
This is great and overdue. The misinformation spread by the Russians and the candidate/political party they supported during the 2016 election was egregious and seemingly decisive in the outcome. The internet could be such a positive force for helping people to communicate rather than the slapdash arrangement it has become. I hope it keeps advertisers at bay.
18
@Pat And you really think that a "Contract for the Web" co-sponsored by the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Twitter is going to help do that?
I have a great deal of admiration for Tim Berners-Lee, but this initiative is just wishful thinking.
Despite his brilliant innovation, Berners-Lee is thinking in a 20th century mode. The emergence of broadcasting in the early 20th century resulted in the sweeping Communications Act of 1934, which effectively placed strong controls on what could be disseminated over public airwaves and regulated broadcasters and receivers, both individually and in technology. The web broke that mold -- it took control away from the few licensed entities and was heralded as a democratic, ubiquitous new media that would make everyone equal. Early efforts to regulate it were fought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which rightfully felt the medium should not have a few gatekeepers like TV networks. The downside of that approach is that anyone can broadcast, reach, collect and communicate anything they want. I don't think a "Contract" or a regulation is going to work here. This is an issue of human nature because its an entirely different mode of communication that's new to the 21st century. Can we as humans find a way to be more human and less ... Alex Jones?
48
@David Law Indeed.
The internet is much more like the town square or public sidewalk or privately run BBSes of the 1980's/1990's than it is like limited capacity broadcast channels granted/sold access by the government to limited radio spectrum shared by all. Almost any speech is allowed in the public square or sidewalk or a BBS. It's up to the recipient of the message to pay attention if they choose and decide what is/is not applicable.
The internet is much more the "users choice" than the town square or public sidewalk. If someone doesn't want to hear or see a protester's or nutcase's message on a public sidewalk, it can be quite inconvenient to avoid it and may actually cost significant time or money to avoid (such as returning to shop later or detouring around it). On the other hand, (almost) everything someone accesses on the internet starts with the user taking a series of proactive steps to access (generally clicking, typing, or speaking to navigate to content).
6
@Bob Richards Part of the issue here is that people are confusing the Web with the earlier invention, by DARPA, of the internet, which the Web was built on. It doesn't matter what Berners-Lee thought the Web was for. It was sitting on the Internet, which became popular precisely because it lacks central control and the inhibitions thereof. The chaos we see now is baked into the internet and always has been.
Berners-Lee's mistake was to build anything on the internet, if he wanted the end product to be under anyone's control and therefore capable of pursuing an agenda that was under his control. Way too late now. And it wouldn't have mattered, if he'd put the Web on something else, it would have sputtered out and died, like other too-controlled competitors to the internet like Minitel (and yes there used to be competitors).
7
Dear Tim Berners-Lee
I've heard you are a good guy, but I have to tell you that the World Wide Web, as useful and addictive as it is, has actually destroyed the world wide world.
Travel is no longer an astonishing adventure.
You can google it all in advance.
Social life is all about watching people managing their machines. People themselves sometimes seem to have become digital avatars.
Political life, well, you read the papers, I am sure.
Bookstores no longer exist in a great range of places.
"Notifications" hound us everywhere.
The web has created mass anxiety, ask the schoolteachers if you don't believe me.
Some hotels in California are actually marketing themselves as special luxury hotels - and charging higher prices - because there is no wi-fi. Thus, reality itself has been monetized.
My hope is that you would un-invent it.
But I realize that no one, anywhere, agrees with me. And also, here I am telling you this on the web.
58
@ps I absolutely agree with you. So there's that.
8
@ps this is such a myopic view. The internet has improved lives around the world immeasurably. I was just in an africa country where there was a national GED program available on the internet for people who missed the chance to go to school when they were younger. It's allowed thousands to learn to get better jobs. The academic community has been enhanced many orders of magnitude thanks to the ability to share huge datasets and have discussions online. Whatever, turns off your notifications, take control over your life...that has nothing to do with the web. That's on you.
15
@Kyle Yes, there are alarmists everywhere, which is precisely why the web causes confusion...people are confusing and they lie and cheat and steal. A contract would only make good those who follow it; many will not and no criminal or bad actor will. You can't contract good behavior across the world.
The pretend that nearly every interaction I do on a daily basis over the web is awesome, even if there are moron and criminal types. Of course, that mirrors the very people everywhere.
4
All that to avoid some advertising and namecalling from unknown commenters. Wouldn't it be easier just to ignore it and learn to think for yourself.
3
Stop, we all know Al Gore invented the web on his way to making millions with his cable tv and book deals. Losing that election was good for him and very bad for the rest of us, especially the Iraqis.
2
Things will have to get a whole lot worse before real deciders in the free world take a radical idea like this very seriously.
You think a contract will restrain the likes of V. Putin?
Your plan for avoiding this "digital dystopia" is woefully inadequate and naive.
1
You'd think that an eminent newspaper like the New York Times, that takes an interest in Britain and its culture, could get British terms of address right. Sir Tim Berners-Lee is not addressed as "Sir Berners-Lee". He is either "Sir Tim Berners-Lee" or "Sir Tim" (yes, that's polite"), or, for that matter, plain "Tim Berners-Lee" without the honorific. Similarly, please don't review a movie featuring Judi Dench and call her "Dame Dench". It's not that big of a deal, but why not get it right?
4
"You'd think that an eminent newspaper like the New York Times ... could get British terms of address right."
The Times's style book has it "right". And the problem has been fixed since you posted.
FYI, the style book is published as:
"The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage" by Allan M. Siegal & William G. Connolly.
Libraries and booksellers may have it.
Sir Tim should read his own organization's "Privacy notice", which DEFERS to Google and Mailchimp privacy policies.
So users have to read THREE privacy policies to understand how their privacy could be compromised:
* "We also track visitor usage patterns on our website, including page views. We do this using Google Analytics. You can read Google’s Privacy Policy here: [Google link omitted]."
* "We collect and store this [personal] data using Mailchimp. You can read Mailchimp’s privacy policy here: [Mailchimp link omitted]."
Both quotes are from the "Privacy notice" at contractfortheweb.org.
3
No single person invited the WWW. Sorry mate
2
The Law eventually was hammered out in the Wild West. But the subject of www turned rogue, while making a lot money at tht enterprise level, encouraging titanic fortunes and fortune-seekers, has exploded to painfully endless proportions: https://www.drseussart.com/illustration-art/the-bee-watcher
Kind of hard to push it all back at this point. Like the old open lands of the N. American West, the www open space has been polluted.
1
Sir Tim - lot of a respect admiration for what you are trying to do, but you lost me when you added that
' tech giants like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Reddit.. '
are joining your Contract for the Web
!??!
1
The answer - as always from folks like Berners-Lee and the worthy readership of the NYTimes - is censorship.
@RJ
I read this not as censorship, but as transparency.
We just need to innovate a totally new code stream for sharing content and engaging each other that is engineered to bring out the best in people. Thank you TBL for HTML. Truly, But it is time to migrate from HTML to something new and better.
Hello New World
Nice effort but only a start. We need a global court system dealing with all things electronic and digital with qualified jurists and legal representatives to enforce agreed-upon rules and regulations. It must be open and transparent providing for both individual complaints and class actions by impacted citizens as well as maintaining a public platform for the tech giants to litigate against each other. Of course, the banks and financial institutions need a formal voice given all the commerce online, investment platforms and digital currency already in place and still unfolding. Since global may be too big a first step which country will start the process? If the brain trust of the WWW doesn't start asking it is time to ask them why they are silent.
If Google and Facebook are already signatories to the this otherwise laudable Contract for the Web, then the foxes are already in the henhouse — and Mark Zuckerberg and Sergey Brin are doubling down on their demonstrably bald-faced lies about their good intentions. Let’s first break up Google and Facebook.
8
"We’re at a tipping point. How we respond to this abuse will determine whether the web lives up to its potential as a global force for good or leads us into a digital dystopia."
It's too late, we've already tipped. To mix my metaphors, we've tipped the genie out of the bottle. When's the last time mankind has succeeded in stuffing one of those back in?
We're already living this digital dystopia, with far more of it to come.
4
"There’s already a powerful coalition backing the contract. The governments of nations such as France, Germany and Ghana [and of course, the United States] have signed on to its principles."
Until the phrase added in brackets above doesn't have brackets anymore, we're all in for a long, sad, slog.
2
The only way it can be fixed is by being destroyed completely - The disintegration of our public institutions, the infinite libraries of personal user data gathered without our explicit consent, the hyper-precision of targeted advertising, the ideologically myopic echo-chamber, incivility, genocide, the utter corrosion of the world's collective attention span, the eradication of the town commons...
We don't read books. We don't speak to one another. We ignore our children. Our baser impulses are encouraged and rewarded by extremist groups (with extremism increasingly becoming a mainstream set of values). The world wide web ostensibly paves the road ahead to Authoritarianism. The world web offers no edification - it's truly awful.
It's a banal platitude, yet, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."
3
I was kinda with you til I reached this sentence: "The tech giants Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Reddit sit alongside other specialists such as the search engine DuckDuckGo in committing to action."
Say what? The only action Facebook is committed to is increasing their profits - democracy and decency be damned.
Your effort sounds like one of those well-meaning movements where organizations sign on to show their intent to do good. But back at home they continue doing exactly what they have always done.
9
All of the author's observations and many of his proposed solutions make a lot of sense.
That said, once Pandora's box was opened ...
You know the rest.
4
The internet and the web are mirrors.
They were great when those involved were generally educated and knowledgeable.
But as they spread to the population at large -- which is generally unencumbered by great intellect or positivity or goodwill -- they morphed into an echo chamber of the worst of humanity, which is in fact, the majority of humanity.
There's no fixing it. There's just sticking to the outer edges where knowledge and decency still exist while the masses spread their hate and ignorance.
9
@Michael-in-Vegas
This has got to be the most spot on point about the internet. If you stay in the realms where people are educated and working (github, researchgate, stackexchange, etc) you will find plenty of sane and respectful dialogue. Go to where anybody at all can publish material (reddit, facebook, etc) and it's hate and vitriol
Everybody who writes that this won't work because of human psychology (which is implicitly what people are saying) is correct.
Almost.
You have to work from outside in (work on implementing Berners-Lee's brilliant vision) and from inside out (work on new, global ways to transform human consciousness).
in fact, we don't need "new" ways to transform consciousness.
We don't even need Michael Pollan's psychedelics. The ways have been known for thousands of years, but few wish to do what it takes to support the transformation.
It's really very simple, whether dealing with the internet, international wars or climate change.
Transform or we're doomed.
www.remember-to-breathe.org
"Companies must look beyond next-quarter results and understand that long-term success means building products that are good for society and that people can trust them.
There’s already a powerful coalition backing the contract . . . The tech giants Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Reddit sit alongside other specialists . . . committing to action."
You include Facebook among those people can trust? Your naivety is showing. Zukerberg has no interest in "building products that are good for society", not one sliver of such. His only interest is Zukerberg. The others at least understand that their success depends upon providing services that serve, not just make money and build their power.
3
Enough!
Before every editorial advocating censorship of political speech online I propose a law mandating that tradition media outlets like the NYT must give an estimate of how much they stand to gain financially by regulating rivals.
Then i'd like to see a detailed first amendment friendly implementation of this from the article:
" bad actors subvert democracy using clever digital tactics. The use of targeted political ads in the United States’ 2020 presidential campaign and in elections elsewhere threatens once again to undermine voters’ understanding and choices.
Under the first amendment what kinds of ads should be allowed? who's a bad actor? What do you really know about voters understanding and why should you decide these things?
Or just honestly advocate amending the first amendment, exactly how i don't know but it's clear this news paper has issues with the protection of speech as currently understood.
1
@Brian My opinion is that the first amendment does need further amendment. The gist of the revision would be to add the broadcast of falsehood to the list of unprotected types of speech—that is, we should not be guaranteed the right to spread falsehood. The devil is, admittedly, in the details.
I’m retired now after a long career in IT and I remember well how excited I was by the internet and the World Wide Web. I along with many others saw the remarkable potential of the new technology for good and the benefits to humanity seemed almost endless. Now, 30 years later, I avoid it all with only a very few exceptions (the New York Times website being one). The potential of the Web has been undermined by greed and lawlessness and just plain stupidity. What a shame for humanity that such a remarkable resource now encompasses threats we could never have dreamed of when it all began.
3
Trumpism is a threat to our democracy. Abusers of the public trust, like Facebook, are a much bigger threat by far.
What kind of monsters publish believable-sounding lies directly to voters, just because lies earn them big profits? They make it very, very difficult for people to know what is true, so they can hang on to billions of dollars. Democracy cannot survive unless these platforms are forced to follow the rules of other publishers.
3
We could always break up these media monopolies, but NOOOooooo!
2
You overestimated human nature.
We have selective empathy, we are overly groupish.
And face to face cues for decency and politeness, turn out to be important for us. Achieve absolute anonymity, and you will see the worst in us. Nice try, though.
2
"... why on an exercise app should women have to worry that their precise jogging routes are shared ..."
That's a sexist example. In fact, such "sharing" is a threat to *national security* when "shared" routes are those of military personnel:
Strava Fitness App Can Reveal Military Sites, Analysts Say
By Richard Pérez-Peña and Matthew Rosenberg
Jan. 29, 2018
New York Times
1
Ideally the entire thing would be taken down and just go away. It's been a disaster and getting worse all the time. Those of us who remember life without it would barely bat an eye. The rest would have to deal with it. Read a book and pick up the phone.
38
@Greater Metropolitan Area you and I both know that is not happening (and it is interesting that you propose to revert back to the phone, a revolutionary technology in its own time just like the Internet), so let's focus on real solutions.
I would the Internet it to a powerful medicine -- used for the right indications at the right doses, it can work wonders. Used for the wrong indications at the wrong doses, it can do devastating harm. Consider that no one ever proposed we do away with medicine.
The Internet could also be likened to a parallel universe we're building as we go along. At the same time its lawlessness is causing major problems, it's also getting better and safer every day. Just compare the conversations happening on the Internet today to the contents of the earliest chatrooms. So full of nonsense and hate. Those conversations still happen, but they are increasingly moderated and checked, and plenty of meaningful, powerful, profound, constructive conversations are happening as well.
2
@Greater Metropolitan Area
Ironically not realizing that the exact same commentary surrounded the introduction of the new-fangled dial-phone in 1919.
Pick up the phone - indeed.
3
@Greater Metropolitan Area Luddites unite! Oh yeah, can't organize them across the world if we remove human communications from our capabilities.
3
A nice plan on paper, but a bit pie in the sky in reality. Can't say I truly trust Facebook and company to really police themselves or open up their algorithms to scrutiny.
2
Seems to me like this genie is out of the bottle and any attempt to stuff it back in, even partially, is doomed to failure. A good parallel is guns in American society and subsequent tries at gun control.
4
I am 51. I would give gladly give up all that the world wide web offers in order to get rid of all the harm it does humanity. Anyone with me? The genie is out of the bottle, we can't go back in time, but we do have control over how much of our lives, time, attention, and personhood we give over to it.
6
The horse has already left the barn, so whatever you can think up, whatever stone you have treasures buried beneath, or your most secret wish the information is already out there and can follow you anywhere. However if we meld brain to brain communications with the internet we would already know the 5 w’s. This new technology could or would take care of a huge portion of the internet and could help in further preventing global warming.
4
Pretty simple, require the internet follow the same guidelines as print and "airwave" media. Any business in this country exists because we allow it. Period. It is utter fiction that the web is anything but a media business. Humanity will only be served when business is forced to do it, otherwise their bottom line wins. Every time. Oh yeah, and bring back the "Fairness Doctrine" and apply it to the web. This was not a successful experiment, time to learn from the mistakes and act upon them with all haste.
8
@Joseph You've confused "the internet" with "media on the internet," and offered zero evidence that the 2 are the same. In fact, I'd argue that 99.9% of the internet has nothing at all to do with the media.
Your myopic view of what the internet is is exactly indicative of the problem.
1
@Joseph Print media in the US has very few restrictions (the usual criminal and civil limitations on threats, fraud, defamation, treason, etc apply just as they do in all mediums) because of the First Amendment. This is how it, and the internet, should be.
The fairness doctrine only applied to _broadcast_ medium holding broadcast licenses giving them exclusive access to sections of the shared and limited "public" radio spectrum. Radio spectrum is a finite resource so does need to be controlled and allocated somehow and could be monopolized by a few players due to physics, unlike the internet. The fairness doctrine never applied to print media of any sort, public or private meetings, public or private demonstrations, BBSes, etc.
The internet is basically infinite for practical purposes -- one person's use of it does not hamper another person's use of it so there's no need for a "fairness" doctrine. Everyone is free to view what they want (subject to the publisher's approval) and publish what they want (subject to the narrow First Amendment exceptions).
Do you want your email provider to decide the emails you're sending to a group of friends isn't "balanced" and either inject opposing views or reject your "send" request? Do you want Trump's Justice department doing that? Do you want Warren's justice department doing that? What about your posts here? What about your "newsletter" for your political action group web page?
Be careful what you wish for.
It's a nice idea, but rather naïve. It is possible, even probable, that some countries will adopt and actually enforce this contract, but the balkanisation of the web is already upon us, and I see virtually no chance that China, Russia, Iran, Turkey; in fact, any authoritarian country, will go back to an open web along the lines of Mr Berners-Lee's contract. It doesn't mean like-minded countries should do nothing, but it won't be a seamless world-wide web.
4
With all due respect to minds greater than mine, I think the genie is out of the bottle. Two points:
Too many governments and companies have been successfully abusing the internet. Why would they "sign on" to a contract?
Governments change, so do their ways of governing. What might have been agreed to by a previous governement could be changed by a subsequent government.
3
My biggest concern about the web is data privacy. It angers me that my bank, grocery store, and government buy and sell my personal information. I am afraid of being robbed financially through the web.
I am not that concerned about misinformation. Any advertisement or statement that I come across on Twitter or Facebook can be checked for accuracy very easily. The people who are influenced by intentional misinformation on the web are simply lazy.
I teach college students. Every student knows that they cannot support a position with a Facebook or Twitter meme. They have to find credible research to support a point of view. The only ones who are misinformed about politics by reading web information are those who are too lazy or are just looking for confirmation of their presuppositions.
5
@cheddarcheese The problem is that the people you call "lazy" can vote.
1
@cheddarcheese
Unfortunately most people can't make that distinction. They don't have the critical thinking skills. Old people come from the Walter Cronkite days when you could trust what you were told. They can't tell the difference.
Keep up the good fight.
2
@cheddarcheese Um, most services on the Web are not paid for using subscriptions. That model is sometimes tried, and users do not sign up. The model was tried even if the services with subscriptions promised to protect users privacy and information top-to-bottom.
As a result, if you are not pay for services, as the saying goes, then they are not the product, YOU are the product. The idea of a Free Lunch is just as silly on the Web as anywhere else.
1
I believe the single biggest problem with the internet is the anonymity it confers. It's certainly true that demonstrators in Iran or China need anonymity to gather, but the cost of that anonymity is too high for the rest of the world.
8
@R. Grant Steen ...and therein lies the problem: "freedom of speech" needs to be sometimes protected, sometimes questioned. Where do you draw the line?
2
@R. Grant Steen Anonymity is relative: While it is relatively easy to obtain, applying sufficient resources can generally compromise it. This introduces another asymmetry.
The other way of doing this is to remove all anonymity, and make everyone authenticate to their personal identity before speaking.
Unfortunately, while that may be a good idea, there are forces in this world who would not welcome such communications being incapable of being intercepted.
@R. Grant St
I came here to say this... as long as people can hide behind a 'clever' user name and take no responsibility for the hateful things they are spewing, this problem will only continue to escalate.
1
Many commenters here seem unclear as to the distiction between the internet and the world wide web. The internet has been around since the 60's, albeit not accessible to the masses. Tim Berners-Lee did, indeed, invent the World Wide Web around 1990, which was a way of using the internet. He created the idea of web pages and of hypertext, the backbone of the web as we know it today.
10
This is slightly misleading. It’s true that ARPANET (precursor of the internet) made it’s first single computer-to-computer link in late 1969. An additional two nodes were functional at the end of that year but at the time it linked just four universities as a mostly “proof of concept” operation. It wasn’t declared “operational” until 1975 when the Defense Communications Agency took control and even then it was largely confined to use for unclassified military communications. I actually had a log in for the old ARPANET as a function of my job. Today’s internet started on some of that original infrastructure, but its a very different system than the very rudimentary, text-only one in use back in the 70’s. The best way to explain the difference in simple terms is that “The Internet” is a descriptor of the total package - the software, including things like email and the Web that most people use and are familiar with, along with the hardware that it all runs on.
4
@David S. Thanks for saving me the trouble, Pal. And by the way, it was that tax-and-spend socialist President Eisenhower who laid the groundwork for the internet, via the Arpanet.
1
@BlackJack
He was the last great Republican. Lincoln, Teddy R, Eisenhower. Don't knock it.
Rs became bad news when they became anti-government with Reagan, and then became evil when they were taken over by Russia.
Shouldn’t one worry that including companies like Facebook, Reddit, and Google in Mr. Berners-Lee’s Contract Coalition will amount to inviting the foxes into the chicken-house? How will discipline be enforced against such members?
15
@Michael N. Alexander: Facebook, Reddit, and Google are the slow-walker committee. You can't have big change without a slow-walker committee, otherwise things just happen too fast, fortunes are lost, and other big disasters (for billionaires).
A few ideas for consideration:
Heavily tax the sale of data.
Expand fraud statutes to cover various Internet scams and misrepresentations, without having to prove "states of mind."
Allow, and subsidize free, encrypted email accounts (a new role for the Post Office?)
Copy Google's search engine and publish it for use by others as a government service. (The US government is not bound by patent infringement law.
24
@Bill Johnston
Great concrete ideas. Hope they stimulate more to discuss debate and decide upon for our collective well being. Thanks!
2
@Bill Johnston A much better search engine already exists: https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-revenue-model/
2
@Bill Johnston
Fraud statutes already apply to the internet. "states of mind" is not a significant barrier to prosecution. One of the biggest barriers is that fraudsters are often/usually outside our borders so they are beyond easy (or sometimes any) reach of our enforcement. Another barrier is the use of VPNs, TOR, and other obfuscation even by domestic fraudsters. Just like the US postal service, your email provider is not obligated (nor should they be) to open every envelope and examine the contents and make a determination if it's fraud and refuse to deliver it if it is. Although most email providers attempt to warn you about "spam" which also catches most fraud in my experience (99% or more of the fraud emails I receive end up in spam -- albeit about 0.1% of my legit email also ends up there).
Re USPS and email... Back in the mid 90's I thought USPS was missing the boat by not offering an email service. They would of course have to charge for it -- probably for each message sent to a USPS addr -- in order to fund it, and more importantly, to deter spam/fraud. They missed the boat. Every resident could have one (almost certainly quite human unfriendly) verified email address that they could keep for life and could forward wherever they want or suspend. Businesses could buy USPS email addresses if they wanted. An individual could opt to receive "notice" by USPS email and that would serve as legal service and USPS could keep "legal" copies for some period of time.
2
Do not worry, this happened with the invention of pretty much anything else. There is probably nothing else out there that did not eventually ended up supporting a bad cause, aiding a despot or an oppressive power, starting with fire, the wheel, the use of sticks and stones...
I just tuned into Twitter and saw an incredible outpouring of condolences and empathy towards a young woman who had lost her mother. None of these people knows each other (or perhaps just a few), and yet they all expressed such loving kindness to each other so seeming spontaneously and in such healing manner. It is not the technology, it is HOW we use it.
1
@Matt T Compare your loving kindness incident to the volume of hate spewed out on message boards and forums, those intended for widespread reading and those intended for consumption by like-minded people. Sorry, but the former, while certainly endearing and welome, does not outweigh the latter. To say nothing of the use of our internet activity for the profit of private companies. And so much more. Don't get me wrong. After all, here I am commenting on a post on the internet. And I will continue to use the internet. But at least let's acknowledge the harm it is doing, e.g, the rise of nationalism, white supremacy, xenophobia, bigotry, hate, misogyny, lies, and so much more.
I miss friends picking up the phone instead of sending me an online post.
11
How can anyone still be on Facebook? When you dance with the Devil you never change him. He always changes you.
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@Jim
If you think getting off FB means you are no longer "dancing with the devil", you are sadly mistaken. Unless, of course, you are never on-line.
1
@Riley2
Agreed. Facebook is just the worst offender in my opinion.
I did not know there was one person who invented the WWW. Thank you Tim BL. We all stand on the shoulders of giants.
Now it's time for us, or the next genius, to improve the WWW to suit humanity. We can do it. We can eliminate hunger and homelessness and divisiveness. We all need to share our excess to improve the lives of all. Peace.
5
@Tom Walker - There was NOT just one person that invented the WWW, he was just one of many people in universities, government and private companies who helped to put together the immense hardware/software structure that is the Web. Watch the NetFlix TV Series, "Halt and Catch Fire" to get an idea of how the web was built starting back in the 1970's with the invention of the microprocessors, high density integrated circuits and mass storage devices along with enhanced telephone networks to tie all the computers together.
7
@Wayne wrong. You're speaking of the internet, not the WWW. Sir Tim developed the original hypertext filled web pages (hypertext was actually a cluge of IBM script) that makes up the WWW. WWW is only one corner of the internet.
4
@Wayne I might be biased because I used to work for TimBL, but it seems clear to me that individuals can invent things while standing on the shoulders of giants. That was Isaac Newton's framing, and it's a good one. Just because Newton or Berners-Lee built upon the work of many others and could not have succeeded without the help of still more people, that doesn't mean they didn't actually do the world a great service (or harm or whatever) by inventing things.
2
All anybody needs to do, throughout their lives, is ask themselves: "If I do this, what's the worst thing that could happen? How would I deal with that, or prevent it?" Nobody ever seems to do that kind of self-evaluation, or consider the consequences. They just barge forward, catastrophe be damned. I really don't think most people are that ethical. The prospect of enormous profit carries so much more weight in their calculations, than harmful results. YOU should have thought of these things, before you moved forward. Now, I think it's way too late.
5
“I took the initiative in creating the internet.” - Al Gore in a 1999 CNN interview with Wolf Blitzer.
1
I wish I had a dime for everyone who claimed to have invented the internet/WWW.
1
@Steven Roth Except that TimBL really did invent the World Wide Web, which was a protocol that runs on top of the Internet (which he didn't create). https://home.cern/science/computing/birth-web
I have been using the internet since 1981, and remember using the early world wide web starting around 1990. The WWW was pretty primitive back then, and only a few places were on it, but it was a revolutionary way of organizing and linking information. It grew pretty quickly, even as most people didn't really find out about it until the late 90's.
7
@Andy ...and I remember how the first advertisements on the web were roundly critized because that wasn't what the web was for. Oh well (sigh)
1
@Andy
Thanks Andy.
A contract is nice in theory, but it's not enough. The government needs to start regulating now! I realize that people can't entirely be saved from themselves, but the Internet has enabled an astounding proliferation of the sex trade, gambling, pornography, illegal drug sales, scammers, trollers, and the awful Pedophiles who are abusing children! I know that these things have always existed, but so many more people are vulnerable now than before..especially children! The Internet has become a veil for people with evil intentions and corporations often perpetuate or ignore their duplicity in these crimes. Something has to be done!
7
Yes, absolutely remove anominity. I was shocked when the Times succombed to this practice and said so from the very start. I have little respect for those unwilling to use their real names.
2
@delphine herbert
I did use my real name initially. I was a little alarmed when I googled myself and found that some conservative sites took my name and plastered it all over their sites because they didn't like what I said.
@delphine herbert Not sure if you remember when Facebook started, but perhaps its most significant innovation over everyone else trying to build online social networks was its use of real names for people. It doesn't look like that has saved us.
1
@delphine herbert
Flat earthers and white supremacists love that it isn't anonymous. The problem with the internet is that it gives a very cheap platform to absolutely anyone for any topic. Facebook and others should charge for each read of a post and pay the viewer a portion of what is collected. Give away 100 free views for each post and they stop showing them when the limit is reached. If your message is important enough you should have to pay for people to see it. By the way, this works for e-mails as well.
The World Wide Web is governed by one simple rule - if you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product.
I laugh at the "outrage" expressed when personal data from free social media platforms is abused.
3
I cannot imagine Google actually supporting the "Contract for the Web". Their business model and fixing what is wrong with the web, are polar opposites.
2
Have you ever seen the 1956 sci-fi movie “Forbidden Planet”? Influential to both Star Trek and Star Wars.
The gist of it was, an ancient race called the Krell had built huge computers under the surface of their planet, computers so powerful that the Krell had only to imagine something, and it would appear, to their delight.
They shortly went extinct, and the movie is basically the quest to understand why: they forgot “the monsters of the Id”, their version of Freud’s nasty unconscious. They killed themselves.
3
The web was an evolution, not invented or perceived by a single person.
2
@Raz - I agree, having worked in the computer hardware/software arena since the late 1960's. There was NOT just one person that invented the WWW, many people in universities, government and private companies who helped to put together the immense hardware/software structure that is the Web. Watch the NetFlix TV Series, "Halt and Catch Fire" to get an idea of how the web was built starting back in the 1970's with the invention of the microprocessors, high density integrated circuits and mass storage devices along with enhanced telephone networks to tie all the computers together. If we hadn't went to the moon, there likely would not be a web or low cost computers.
3
Web reform is just as important as the battle against climate change. Abuse of web-based tech has the capability of destroying the fabric of society, even more quickly than our mad dash to poison our planet.
Having two systems would help.
One system would not allow hidden owners of content. The posters identity would be known. This would encourage confidence in "truth" of content. At least lies could be traced to the liar. This system would be used for business transactions, email, news outlets and other sites proporting to give valid information (eg wikipedia).
There would be another site where anonomity is permitted, even encouraged, to allow anonomous dissent from government oppression, spewing of lies, fake advertising and the like. Users of this system would know it's status and use it warily.
Right now, both systems are intermixed, and we don't know when to trust.
You may have invented the internet, but venture capital built it. Wikipedia is indeed a miracle and shows us the potential of the information age to evolve the human intellect, but modern society is an ongoing business concerns that is heartless. The worst exemplars of web entities catering to the worst of human impulses are also the most profitable. The internet transformed tech industry engineers from awkward martyrs to a financial elite, made possible by a Faustian marriage with venture capital that wanted very large return-on-investment. Your contract is as useless as the Paris accord until we change our societal values and veer away from our cupidity with personal fortunes and financial elitism. Face it, when we unleashed the internet to for-profit enterprise and social media, what followed was a fait accompli.
4
The moment we voluntarily cede regulatory authority over what content may and may not be published to governments, free expression dies.
By all means, make the hosts of web domains subject to claims of defamation, as with publishers of print media. Do not, however, call upon governments to actively regulate content. That way lies China.
2
The Contract's ambition is certainly all encompassing, but maybe starting with ferocious attacks on a few specific targets might generate the momentum to go deeper into the swamp.
I would start by making it very difficult for the world wide colossus of crooks and con artists to operate as if they had a latchkey for every dwelling on the web. Why should I have to continually confront a bunch of thieves hiding quietly behind mouse clicks and hacking code?
Make the web a low crime neighborhood, even if it takes civilianizing part of the NSA's mission to help.
1
The undercurrent of everything Mr. Berners-Lee describes here is the fact that the internet is a natural reflection of the collective mindset of all who use it. In a strange way, the ugliness of the internet is also the surest sign of its success. No regulations, rules, or "contracts" with the big players can remove the hypocrisy, self-harm, and ignorance, nor the beauty, humanity, and creativity of humanity.
Until the majority of our elected representatives can figure out that the WWW is not a "collection of tubes" none of this can come to fruition.
We need to start electing young progressives who at least have an elementary understanding of the internet and WWW.
5
@Nata Harli "We need to start electing young progressives who at least have an elementary understanding of the internet and WWW." All of this is excellent except the "young" part. That part is just ageism.
2
@steve Not ageist, just common knowledge that as you get older, you become less and less able to keep up with the advances in tech in the way that younger folks can. If that's ageist, then it is ageist to argue that younger people can't vote before 18.
2
@Alyssa That's only true if you don't try. I am an engineer and I learn new stuff every day. As steve points out, assuming that you get more out of touch as you get older is a trope that hurts older people trying to find employment. If you think about age as having had more time to accumulate more knowledge and skills, then such "common knowledge" would be debunked as discrimination.
1
Everything can be used for good or for evil. It is the citizens of the world that can decide which it is by being involved and making laws to make it happen.
2
Within the U.S. there needs to be laws written to regualte all of the big Internet platforms.
Sacha Baron Cohen has just given a brilliant speech about this, pointing out the entire public Internet ecosystem in the U.S., and thus by extension most of the rest of the world, is controlled by just six billionaires.
Currently they are running everything for their own personal interests, period.
Zuckerberg, a textbook case of a sociopath, is the most notorious as he is a very obvious and unapologetic (despite the dozens of fake apologies) bad actor.
Interestingly, if symbolically, Google recently dropped its "Don't be evil" motto and, much less symbolically, has been cracking down on the ability of its employees to resist company policies and actions.
8
For years I've been telling friends that if I could un-invent one thing, it would be the internet. For every 'convenience' the internet has provided, it has destroyed something else more sacred. Every time.
2
The history of science is marked by inventions whose impact, on society's embrace, appalled their inventors.
What is as important is not just how badly the invention marred human existence, but how society (and the inventor themselves) reacted to these intended or unintended outcomes.
In this respect Berners-Lee joins a notable lineage of influential inventors and scientists. Appalled by the perversion of the noble vision the WWW first broached he proposes a new vision, a new noble pledge. I wish his effort well, though it remains unclear that this will be any more successful than the efforts of other appalled forebears; Nobel, Oppenheimer, to name but two. Both tried to elevate society in response to their horror at what they had wrought. The first with a series of bequests in his name to foster and recognize intellectual excellence, the second through tireless devotion to nuclear arms control.
It is arguably the case that while both efforts succeeded, neither erased their negative point of origin. How will Berners-Lee's proposals be viewed in coming years I wonder?
8
All the perceived ills and issues with the WWW were also manifest in past technology revolutions, like the broad distribution of printing devices, radio and TV, and telephones. People in those eras feared and complained about many of the same things, and many suggested similar cures focused on controlling how people use the technology.
So when some suggest (or demand) extensive screening and censorship of the web, do they also support the same for printed media? For their personal phone calls (and texts)?
1
Oh, where to even start...
If Tim Berners-Lee wants to fix the Web, then why did he personally approve unnecessary and creepy DRM for it in the form of Encrypted Media Extensions, over widespread and massive protests?
Why did he allow the creepy advertisers, who now don't just control so much of what ends up on the Web but write or bankroll all of the major browsers used to view it, to split off from the W3C and effectively hijack its move toward XHTML to make a "living standard" that is so differently implemented between the big browsers that it's, uh, not standard?
Why did he allow that hijack to make the least necessary change in HTML's history, when all the W3C had to do to stop Flash was emphasize that a given object tag doesn't have to be implemented by a plugin?
Why did he allow that change to divorce its long-standing relationship with SGML, and instead deliberately codify long-standing bad markup parsing practices?
Why is Chrome ignoring MathML and instead effectively requiring MathJax, which sites often implement with a central script that's effectively a creepy Like button?
Why involve anti-privacy, anti-democracy Facebook and Twitter in this process at all?
Why isn't third-party code like ads opt-IN?
He turned his back on the Web he made, and now swoops in as its hope for salvation. After ignoring the EME protests, I won't wait for his response, and instead offer him combined advice from Memphis Bleek and Jeremy Corbyn: play your position, or consider it.
9
@SR Thank you. It's always nice to get an opposing opinion from someone who's well informed on the issue.
3
I don't think this goes nearly far enough.
The internet was fun when I was in college and it was all about instant messanger, Flash videos, and downloading music. That is, it was for communication and entertainment mostly. Now that the internet has gone mainstream and is being used by corporations to make money, the internet is largely an addictive and malicious drug.
I don't even like that my data is being collected in the first place.
What are you going to do about the fact that everyone stares at their phones when in public? Or that social media makes everyone so angry? Or that I can't buy things in stores anymore, I have to buy things on the internet? Or that whenever I apply for a job, thousands of people did the same by pushing a mere button? What are you going to do about the human cost of the internet? I read through the article and Contract, it sounds like you are going to do nothing.
Outside of email, maps, Netflix, and Hulu, the internet is awful. It's just one big exploitation of the average person so that a few people can make money or gain social status.
You computer scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not you could, you didn't stop to think if you should.
34
@James : I couldn't agree more.
1
@James
Ask not what the Web can do to you, but what you can do to the Web.
1
Increasingly I fail to be surprised by an under/overtone of cynicism in Comments about many Times topics, including this one.
Nonetheless, though I know little about the technical intricacies of the world wide web, how it began, and what precisely will be required to set it straight in the future -- I do believe that without aspiration and inspiration, nothing will change. Obstacles, practicalities, and overarching details always crop up with any major change. But I find the Contract for the Web far more intriguing than most any other dialogue or plan or complaint about the internet than I've seen thus far.
11
We might start with suppressing anonymous Internet usage, including blocking Internet usage when someone is trying to ‘spoof’ internet (tcp/ip) addresses. Even if this would be only a first step, it still will require a lot of work but it might be worth the effort. Another small step might be starting to inform a citizen, or a customer if you like, whenever her or his data has been queried. Whenever there is a query, usually these days on a database, accompany the query with a email notification. Just a few programming lines. But probably a revolution in the way we are treated by our government or whatever company that is selling us stuff. And very probably something they will abhor.
15
Didn’t Al Gore invent the internet?
But seriously, while it’s a great idea, it seems like government regulation and legislation to force the hands of companies like Facebook is the only way something like this will succeed.
Despite all of the problems it has caused, thanks for the World Wide Web!
38
@Bronx Jon
Please don't recite right-wing propaganda from 20 years ago.
Gore never said any such thing.
That was an Republican National Committee War Room attack that the main stream media was only too happy to repeat.
11
As you know - He did not, and never said that he did. However, he did recogniise its potential and worked thru congress to provide the needed funding.
7
@Carey Sublette
It was a joke.
4
As Pogo said, we have met the enemy and he is us. I'm referring to our inability to understand the insidious effects of financing apparently free services with advertising.
Advertisers, commercial or political, will pay more for precision targeting and media providers are more than willing to satisfy the demand with massive personal data collection and sophisticated data analysis.
Tim's plan is fine as far as it goes, but doesn't address the underlying financial incentives. In my opinion, that's up to us.
For starters, quit Facebook and WhatApp until they agree to provide a paid option without advertising.
61
@Michael For all the money they are making off of your data, you should be paid to be on it at all.
5
i salute the "Contract for the Web," especially its call for universal access.
but the proposals appear to me overly legalistic and "negotiable," and ignore both complexity costs and the horizon of unintended consequences.
the fundamental problem is no longer how we manage a single resource but how we legally divide the resource into separate functional domains.
military, government, medical services, social networks, entertainment, retail businesses all use the same hardware infrastructure but in different ways. the internet is already stratified by users and platforms: we need to codify those divisions in law.
examples: your "user data" of medical networks is already protected by medical privacy laws. but social platforms are your individual connections monitored and manipulated by corporate advertisers. law should exclude that opportunity. sure, corporations can join as "individuals" but they should not be allowed to track and advertise within a "social web" -- period.
they can advertise within a "retail web" where sites are free to cookie your browser and search engines to remember and advertise to your product searches ... and with cross site tracking only within the retail domain.
define and divide major internet ecologies by established usage define limits in each: don't let infrastructure delude us that it's all one thing.
let's codify the usage differences that have already evolved. don't use legalisms in a nostalgic attempt to turn back the clock.
5
I applaud the effort here to remedy the Web's maladies by its creator, but I fear we lack the pragmatism to alter it. The Web has grown far, far beyond the intentions of it's makers. Unfortunately, it was never and is not now understood by those who should have been its overseers. Did anyone see Mark Zuckerberg testify in front of Congress? It was like watching puppies catch snowflakes for the first time. They're not up to the task.
Of course, this wouldn't be a problem if we didn't already live in a post-truth dystopia partially created and largely reinforced by the very thing you now want to regulate. The Web--originally created to share knowledge and information--is now creating nearly as much disinformation as knowledge. As a result, it gives cover to people who were always too quick to dismiss inconvenient truths and too likely to wave off 'experts'. Those people used to be forced to listen to others who knew better. Now, they can easily find like-minded souls and feed off one another's conspiracies.
Sadly, we need experts like Mr. Berners-Lee to help regulate his creation, but precisely because he's an expert, an ever-growing portion of the populace won't listen to him. And because that number is sufficiently large, it provides politicians a shield behind which they can hide should they wish to avoid the difficult work of regulating an industry they don't understand.
In my experience, when given the option to do hard work, politicians choose otherwise every time.
39
@Souvient -
During the early days of the Web/internet, there was a huge debate about setting limits and restrictions, much of it concerned with security. The debate became ideological, the winning side flying the nonsensical (my view) banner of “Information Wants to be Free”.
Many of the basic internet problems that afflict us today were foreseen ... and deliberately ignored.
1
Lots of pessimistic comments on here, but I believe we have to start somewhere. Kudos to the World Wide Web Foundation for their efforts.
141
@A Realist
A quick scan of the "principles" of Berners-Lee's Contract, will show why those big corporations endorse it.
The thread running through these principles is to pump-up the use and spread of the web... with some couple of pious words about wouldn't it be nice for governments and companies to become self-surveilled angels.
B.
2
Can anyone trust activists, with their ambitions, or governments, with their mixed agendas, to be disinterested or fair in controlling information?
3
A users union, where each of us DEMANDS PAYMENT FOR PARTICIPATION, is the market answer.
Almost impossible to get started, but Facebook usage should be worth about 25-50% of what Andrew Yang is offering. It's worth that much to Facebook... We need to get paid.
Once it gets started, all the sorry excuses about "I like Twitter" will be replace in "Average Joe" by "why am I not also getting paid".
At the bottom of this reasoning is an attempt to erase the irrationality of "free money". There is no free money, but while people have no concept of their cyber-worth, the same people that are getting robbed are feeling they are getting something for free. That needs to end.
16
@Duncan McTaggart
Bingo! You have put your finger on the single biggest misconception of what Andrew Yang is proposing.
The Value Added Tax (VAT) is a whole different animal from a "wealth tax". This needs to be better understood.
As explained by N. Gregory Mankiw:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/27/business/yang-warren-taxes-mankiw.html
1
@Duncan McTaggart Bravo! I've been trying to get traction for this for years. The madness of people being a commodity with no remuneration is finally being exposed and I love it. These businesses steal data and sell it. The worst are the DNA crooks who will, for a fee, take what most defines "you" legally, totally legally so you can share it and so can they, for yet another fee. It's complete madness. If people are the new natural resource some of that value has to start with the individual the resource comes from. This particular capitalist model need to work bottom up not just up, up.
2
@Joseph Maybe we can convince a billionaire to send everyone $20 that can pass a "social media value stream literacy test" (now THAT's a catchy market jingle!!!).
It's easy to pass the test as long as you actually understand your rights. The only other condition is to post in a way that supports the doctrine and goes viral to the point of irritation, encouraging buy in and otherwise clogging the commercial channels, but most importantly DEMANDING MONEY from social media companies in exchange for participation.
Once someone figures out how, step 2 could be $100 (by now there should be investors) to forego all social media until paid.
Total expenditures probably in the $1.5-2 billion range, but that sort of participation would bring big tech to it's knees.
At that point they will pay to keep their golden goose laying eggs...
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“In my view, governments should impose an immediate ban on targeted political advertising to restore trust in our public discourse.“
Well, in my view this is exactly the right idea.
Our fate may be determined by if it gets implemented, or not. Twitter did the right thing. The rest must follow.
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Sir Tim [addressing a knight as Sir with a surname as this article does is improper.] deserves everlasting praise both for inventing the web and for not monetizing it to enrich himself.
His ideas may seem naively idealistic to some, but we would do well to pay attention to a man who changed and expanded our world so completely.
I see his Contract as aspirational, of course, but why is that a bad thing?
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Let’s start small: ban all paid running-for-political office advertising on the Internet. Regulate all paid advertising on social media and enforce aggressive penalties that is political in nature. Advertising products and services is fine - as long as claims are true.
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@Dave an alternative is to require full disclosure of who is behind the ad including major financial contributors and a statement by the person supported that they endorse the ad or what is set forth in it.
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That’s also a good idea, but for the targeted audiences, the damage will already be done! Remember, lies on FB amplify 7x more than truths.
I see that this contract has already been endorsed by both Facebook and Twitter, so I assume that they concluded that they can safely do so without changing their behaviour. Since they are also the prime enablers of much of what Sir Tim rightly condemns, I am not optimistic that this will have any effect.
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"...governments should impose an immediate ban on targeted political advertising"? Good luck! One way or another, governments DO a lot of that.
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The Internet was 'invented' by 15,000 bulletin board (BBS) operators in the 1980's. The godfather was Boardwatch Magazine's Jack Rickard.
As a developer I had a terminal program that could display (fractally compressed) images years before the govt/UNIX version produced by Mr. Berners-Lee.
The TCP/IP protocol was the true founder of the Net.
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@Dwight Jones Internet =/= WWW. No-one ever claimed that TBL invented the Internet, but we can probably agree that to most people the "world wide web" is essentially synonymous to "what I can access with a browser", and he does have a reasonable claim to having invented this mode of communication.
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@Dwight Jones What you write is correct but not quite the point.
Berners-Lee did invent the web, as he claimed. The internet and the web, while often used interchangeably, are not the same thing. He carefully made no such claim about the internet.
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@Dwight Jones
TCP/IP is not "the web".
And let's not forget that the 'h' in the increasingly hidden URL prefix "http://" stands for "hypertext". The links that hypertext embodies were first thought of by Ted Nelson in the 1960s.
Nelson's vision included paying content providers for their content as the default, whereas current WWW web pages give content away for free by default.
What a different world we'd be in had Nelson's vision been accomplished rather than Berners-Lee.
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So let me see if i've got this right: You propose that our current minority US government, which is only in power because it successfully harnessed the power of an unregulated World Wide Web, adopt regulations that would prevent future such efforts from succeeding?
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@Concerned Citizen - I see a lot of grey hair on the web, keeping in touch with family, friends, etc. There are not enough truly 'rural' people to elect anyone, most suburban/rural. Most don't buy newspapers anymore, TV and web provide news, weather, etc. The web must be regulated.
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@Concerned Citizen @Sam
Regardless of the medium—we need to get rid of “reality” shows like “The Apprentice” “Real Wives” et al—which presented the blatantly false “genius” and glorification of con-people like D.T. to Middle America.
Freedom of TRUTH not lies.
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@Concerned Citizen I notice you left out “white”.
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The internet should solely exist as a database of our collective knowledge. If the government regulates and controls postage, why would it not do so with the internet?
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@Charles Leitner
Because it does not control the content of the mail.
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It's not internet or social media but the forces suppressing truth and transparency. The greatest force to suppress truth & transparency was & still largely is- religion. Political ideologies like communism would come second.
Despite many of its benefits, religion work on the same line of clan or tribal culture of "us" vs "them" gaving rise to different sects/races even within a religion. That divisive nature with it's reach & influence mostly based on lies, deception, ignorance is enormous. Religious Right is not much different than religious left.
Internet/Social media is using that divisive mentality to engage its audience to generate/grow its revenue.
The issue is how we define "truth", which also had profound impact on how we define justice, & who get to decide it.
There is & will always be far less conflict of ideas & even interests when two nations or people can agree on the definition of truth. That's why post-WW2 alliance of USA with its greatest enemies was possible. They became among the best friends after the war, once the dictators distorting truth were removed.
That's why every dictator & autocratic regimes, religious organizations etc. target truth & transparency. They discourage, even ban, asking questions against long held tradition, some call it culture or heritage, with its various propaganda machinery. Technology including internet, social media etc are part of that propaganda mechanism but not the root cause.
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Nice thought, but I’m afraid the privacy ship has sailed. Even if we could “regulate” sharing of personal data, what would that really do to stop the more nefarious influence of world wide connection? Clandestine monitoring, spyware, phishing, dark web ( who invented that?), instant video uploads and viruses will continue to dog anyone who clicks, likes, shares or downloads. Who will bring the rule breakers to justice? A staggering amount of manpower would be needed to enforce this, and even if someone is caught, justice takes years to obtain, even with a successful prosecution. And after a favorable verdict, how long will it take to comply? ( Look no further than your credit score companies).
Granted, its a start, but its right up there with gun control with regards putting the geenie back in the bottle.
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A naive sentiment at best, and far too late at this point.
The jig is already up. Different steps are required, and a much stronger sense of caveat emptor.
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A noble concept, but in an age where 'enlightened self-interest' is all about competition between corporate billionaires, voluntary measures are likely to be a fantasy.
Before all this, however, we need to restore net neutrality, which was abolished under the Trump administration, otherwise many of proposed improvements would be meaningless.
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@RMS I bet this is VERY similar sentiment to when the revolutionary thoughts arose in the colonies [what became the USA], the colonies [that became free nations of Asia and Africa etc]. Change CAN happen.
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Sir Berners-Lee, as brilliant as he is, must already know that his goals, which are most laudable, cannot now be achieved. We cannot, as a world of nations, manage to agree on the more imminent threat of climate change. What makes him believe that action to fix the Internet will be easier? As with many things in life - such as Christianity and capitalism - people and organizations will pay lip service to the notion of a Contract for the Web while dragging their feet and taking active steps to subvert it. The demons released from the Pandora's box of technology will not go meekly back into the box.
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@tom
Maybe so, but at least now we have a litmus test to take their measure.
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I appreciate your cynicism, but we must start to harness this powerful tool. We have to try, even if it’s a Sysiphian task.
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@tom I'm as cynical and pessimistic as anyone I know, having used the web (and done web programming) almost since its inception. I agree Sir Berners-Lee has a steep uphill battle with highly uncertain outcome. But - the alternative is not even to try? I applaud his efforts and greatly appreciate that after all this time, Tim is still fighting the good fight.
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