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posted by CoolHand on Wednesday March 13 2019, @03:24PM   Printer-friendly
from the markup-perversion dept.

Submitted via IRC for FatPhil

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.


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  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 13 2019, @06:17PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 13 2019, @06:17PM (#813851)

    The "tech giants" aren't the problem. The service providers are. They are the gatekeepers protecting the "tech giants" from competition. And they have to act as the government's firewall. All our problems will be solved once we get around the ISP and mute all the stupid arguments for more censorship like this guy is making. He's just pissed about Trump winning the election.

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  • (Score: 1) by drussell on Thursday March 14 2019, @04:20AM (3 children)

    by drussell (2678) on Thursday March 14 2019, @04:20AM (#814056) Journal

    Really? Explain how.

    I am a small ISP with customers numbering in the dozens to hundreds, not thousands to millions.

    Please elaborate as to how I am said gatekeeper or government firewall? I am censoring something somehow?

    I'm not sure where you are located, AC, but perhaps you need to find a better ISP?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @08:10AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @08:10AM (#814110)

      Yes, a small ISP that can be shut down by any authority. And when they come and tell you to block some sites, you will block those sites.. if it's not already done upstream... And *Whose line is it anyway?* Who do you lease from? Please, you're not independent of anything.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @07:18PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @07:18PM (#814387)

        You mean he has to follow the law? Yea, I think it's impossible to get around that, if you want to do business. Although Bahnhof in Sweden does respond in an entertaining and juvenile way.

        Swedish ISP Protests ‘Site Blocking’ by Blocking Rightsholders Website Too [torrentfreak.com]

        Bahnhof has suffered a major defeat against publisher Elsevier after a court ordered the Swedish ISP to block a series of domain names, including Sci-Hub. The decision goes against everything the company stands for but it can't ignore the blocking order. Instead, the ISP has gone on the offensive by blocking Elsevier's own website and barring the court from visiting Bahnhof.se.

        ISP Shows How to Unblock The Pirate Bay (and Other Sites) [torrentfreak.com]

        Swedish Internet service provider Bahnhof issued a rather unusual press release on Thursday. Instead of regular company updates, it explained in detail how sites such as The Pirate Bay can be unblocked. While Bahnhof doesn't block the site itself, the guide does come in handy for its customers.

        ISP Provides Free VPN to Protect Customer Privacy [torrentfreak.com]

        A leading Swedish Internet service provider is taking a novel approach to protect customer privacy. Faced with a legal requirement to log subscriber activities, from next week ISP Bahnhof will give all of its customers a free, no-logging VPN service.

        I'm looking forward to see the response to this:

        ISP Faces ‘Net Neutrality’ Investigation For Pirate Site Blocking Retaliation [torrentfreak.com]

        After being ordered to block a number of piracy-related domains following a complaint from academic publisher Elsevier, Swedish ISP Bahnhof retaliated by semi-blocking Elsevier's own website and barring the court from visiting Bahnhof.se. Those actions have now prompted Sweden's telecoms watchdog to initiate an inquiry to determine whether the ISP breached net neutrality rules.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 16 2019, @01:09AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 16 2019, @01:09AM (#815191)

          Yeah, that's why we need to circumvent the ISP, so we don't have to think about the law. Nobody has any right to interfere with communications. We just need the tech.