{"id":1745,"date":"2017-11-15T21:26:46","date_gmt":"2017-11-16T05:26:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/?p=1745"},"modified":"2017-11-15T21:26:46","modified_gmt":"2017-11-16T05:26:46","slug":"tim-berners-lee-on-the-future-of-the-web-the-system-is-failing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/2017\/11\/15\/tim-berners-lee-on-the-future-of-the-web-the-system-is-failing\/","title":{"rendered":"Tim Berners-Lee on the future of the web: ‘The system is failing’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tFrom the Guardian – Wednesday 15 November 2017 <\/a><\/p>\n

The inventor of the world wide web remains an optimist but sees a \u2018nasty wind\u2019 blowing amid concerns over advertising, net neutrality and fake news<\/p>\n

Sir Tim Berners-Lee\u2019s optimism about the future of the web is starting to wane in the face of a \u201cnasty storm\u201d of issues including the rollback of net neutrality protections, the proliferation of fake news, propaganda and the web\u2019s increasing polarisation.<\/p>\n

The inventor of the world wide web always maintained his creation was a reflection of humanity \u2013 the good, the bad and the ugly. But Berners-Lee\u2019s vision for an \u201copen platform that allows anyone to share information, access opportunities and collaborate across geographical boundaries\u201d has been challenged by increasingly powerful digital gatekeepers whose algorithms can be weaponised by master manipulators.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m still an optimist, but an optimist standing at the top of the hill with a nasty storm blowing in my face, hanging on to a fence,\u201d said the British computer scientist.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to grit our teeth and hang on to the fence and not take it for granted that the web will lead us to wonderful things,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The spread of misinformation and propaganda online has exploded partly because of the way the advertising systems of large digital platforms such as Google or Facebook have been designed to hold people\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are being distorted by very finely trained AIs that figure out how to distract them,\u201d said Berners-Lee.<\/p>\n

In some cases, these platforms offer users who create content a cut of advertising revenue. The financial incentive drove Macedonian teenagers with \u201cno political skin in the game\u201d to generate political clickbait fake news that was distributed on Facebook and funded by revenue from Google\u2019s automated advertising engine AdSense.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe system is failing. The way ad revenue works with clickbait is not fulfilling the goal of helping humanity promote truth and democracy. So I am concerned,\u201d said Berners-Lee, who in March called for the regulation of online political advertising to prevent it from being used in \u201cunethical ways\u201d.<\/p>\n

Since then, it has been revealed that Russian operatives bought micro-targeted political ads aimed at US voters on Facebook, Google and Twitter. Data analytics firms such as Cambridge Analytica, which builds personality profiles of millions of individuals so they can be manipulated through \u201cbehavioural micro-targeting\u201d, have also been criticised for creating \u201cweaponised AI propaganda\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have these dark ads that target and manipulate me and then vanish because I can\u2019t bookmark them. This is not democracy \u2013 this is putting who gets selected into the hands of the most manipulative companies out there,\u201d said Berners-Lee.<\/p>\n

It is not too late to turn things around, he said, provided people challenge the status quo.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are so used to these systems being manipulated that people just think that\u2019s how the internet works. We need to think about what it should be like,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the problems with climate change is getting people to realise it was anthropogenic \u2013 created by people. It\u2019s the same problem with social networks \u2013 they are manmade. If they are not serving humanity, they can and should be changed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Will the situation get worse before it gets better? \u201cIt already has got worse,\u201d he said, referencing the rollback of Obama-era rules to protect net neutrality.<\/p>\n

Net neutrality, which some have described as the \u201cfirst amendment of the internet\u201d, is the idea that internet service providers (ISPs) should treat everyone\u2019s data equally \u2013 whether that data consists of an email from your grandmother, an episode of Stranger Things on Netflix or a bank transfer. It ensures that the large cable ISPs, including Comcast, AT&T and Verizon, don\u2019t get to choose which data is sent more quickly and which sites get blocked or throttled depending on which content providers pay a premium.<\/p>\n

In February 2015, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to more strictly regulate ISPs as utilities and enshrine in law the principles of net neutrality. Trump\u2019s FCC, headed by the former Verizon employee Ajit Pai, wants to kill the rules, arguing that \u201cnothing is broken\u201d and that the rules were established over \u201chypothetical harms and hysterical prophecies of doom\u201d.<\/p>\n

Berners-Lee, who is in Washington urging lawmakers to reconsider the rollback, disagrees and cites problematic examples in which ISPs have violated net neutrality principles. For example, AT&T blocked Skype and other similar services on the iPhone so it would make more money from regular phone calls. Verizon blocked Google Wallet from smartphones when it was developing a competing mobile payment service.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I invented the web, I didn\u2019t have to ask Vint Cerf [the \u2018father of the internet\u2019] for permission to use the internet,\u201d said Berners-Lee, who previously stated that the internet should remain a \u201cpermissionless space for creativity, innovation and free expression\u201d.<\/p>\n

These powerful gatekeepers, Berners-Lee said, control access to the internet and pose a threat to innovation if they are allowed to pick winners and losers by throttling or blocking services. It makes sense, therefore, that ISPs should be treated more like utilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cGas is a utility, so is clean water, and connectivity should be too,\u201d said Berners-Lee. \u201cIt\u2019s part of life and shouldn\u2019t have an attitude about what you use it for \u2013 just like water.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the Guardian – Wednesday 15 November 2017 The inventor of the world wide web remains an optimist but sees a \u2018nasty wind\u2019 blowing amid concerns over advertising, net neutrality and fake news Sir Tim Berners-Lee\u2019s optimism about the future of the web is starting to wane in the face of a \u201cnasty storm\u201d of … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,15,17,19],"tags":[119,122,133,210,336,426,446,637,772,1101,1179,1373,1577,1756,1794,1804],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-sergneri","4":"has-excerpt","5":"post-1745","7":"format-standard","8":"category-politics","9":"category-science","10":"category-thinking-about","11":"category-trump","12":"post_tag-adsense","13":"post_tag-advertising","14":"post_tag-ajit-pai","15":"post_tag-att","16":"post_tag-cambridge-analytica","17":"post_tag-clickbait","18":"post_tag-comcast","19":"post_tag-facebook","20":"post_tag-google","21":"post_tag-misinformation","22":"post_tag-net-neutrality","23":"post_tag-propaganda","24":"post_tag-social-networks","25":"post_tag-twitter","26":"post_tag-verizon","27":"post_tag-vint-cerf"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1745\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}