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The man who invented the web says it's now dysfunctional with 'perverse' incentives
Thirty years ago, the World Wide Web was born.
But over the next 30 years, it needs to be "changed for the better," according to its inventor.
British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee laid out his vision for an information management system, which would become the World Wide Web, in March 1989. The blueprint would radically transform society as half the world's population went online in just three decades. But in a letter published Monday marking the web's 30th anniversary, Berners-Lee said he understands concerns that the internet is no longer a "force for good."
"The fight for the web is one of the most important causes of our time," Berners-Lee said.
[...]An open web has been a sticking point for Berners-Lee. From the outset, he chose to make the underlying code of the World Wide Web available to anyone without a fee.
Berners-Lee said the system has since been designed with "perverse" incentives, which he sees as the second source of dysfunction in the web today. He singled out ad-based revenue models, used by many tech giants like Google and Facebook, that reward "clickbait and the viral spread of misinformation."
[...]"Companies must do more to ensure their pursuit of short-term profit is not at the expense of human rights, democracy, scientific fact or public safety," he said in the letter Monday.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Wednesday March 13 2019, @05:24PM (2 children)
Agree.
But also, there is still a huge, more-pages-than-is-possible-to-know web still out there that is focused on providing info, opinion, education and so on, without the cruft.
The trick to finding the parts of it that are relevant to you is not using search engines, which highlight the most common denominator (popularity) of the mediocre garbage that's out there. Instead, follow curated links. Links that web sites you trust have curated as to be relevant to the subject at hand. Bookmark the good sites, and link back to them on yours, if you have one.
I hardly ever encounter ads and garbage. But I stay away from YouTube, Facebook, and yes, even search engines like Google as much as I possibly can.
Because if one haunts websites that live by advertising, rather than by the will and support of their creator(s), then surfing will [a] run into their advertising (duh) and [b] experience an environment where traffic, not quality, is what drives the site's content.
There's no way to push back the wave of mediocrity that has arisen from the deluge of barely-qualified-to-think individuals that have arrived on the web; but that doesn't mean one must play in their sandbox. The web's still there. A little effort, and you can dig it out, and do a good job of staying in it, rather than in these reeking piles of ad-driven garbage.
If you're even mildly technical, you can map the garbage sites you find (using the hosts file, generally) to a local webpage that simply says "known garbage site." So they won't even get the illusion of a pageview from any further ill-advised clicks you might make.
You can choose what you're willing to tolerate. It's not even that difficult. If you don't so choose, as Rush quite accurately says in the tune "Freewill", "you still have made a choice." It's your gun and your foot. You shot it.
--
If I could have saved all the money I've
spent on pizza, I'd spend it on pizza.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday March 13 2019, @09:23PM
Wasn't the original point of the web to publish scientific papers? Pubmed [nih.gov] is my go-to example for how well we can not just share information, but use richer web elements, database-backed websites, etc. to help people research, organize, and read this kind of content. And maybe eventually ask Facebook people 'Ok, point me to the study that describes the research done on the effects of chemtrails on crab people. It's ok, I'll wait'.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Thursday March 14 2019, @12:10AM
What I would like to see is a browser extension that rates sites by amount of cruft against original content. Or something like that, a cruft meter. So I can decide if the intention of a site may be to inform me, or to deceive me.