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Sir Tim Berners-Lee gave an interview with radio station WBUR about the state of the Web and its future:
Berners-Lee initially imagined the web as a beautiful platform that could help us overcome national and cultural boundaries. He envisioned it would break down silos, but many people today believe the web has created silos.
And he still largely sees the potential of the web, but the web has not turned out to be the complete cyber Utopian dream he had hoped. He's particularly worried about the dark side of social media — places where he says anonymity is being used by "misogynist bullies, by nasty people who just get a kick out of being nasty."
He also identified personal data privacy, the spread of misinformation, and a lack of transparency in online political advertising as major problems with the current Web in a letter marking the World Wide Web's 28th birthday last month.
Previously: World Wide Web Turns 25 years Old
Tim Berners-Lee Proposes an Online Magna Carta
Berners-Lee on HTML 5: If It's Not on the Web, It Doesn't Exist
The First Website Went Online 25 Years Ago
Berners-Lee: World Wide Web is Spy Net
Tim Berners-Lee Just Gave us an Opening to Stop DRM in Web Standards
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 05 2017, @03:51PM (2 children)
Browsers are open source. It is possible to restrict what javascript can access. We just have to grow the balls to compile our own browsers again.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday April 05 2017, @04:13PM
Yes it's pointing in that direction..
That privacy features seems to disappear in free and open webbrowsers seems to be more than a coincident..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 05 2017, @07:53PM
Sure, it is technically possible to disable this antifeature. Most of the web then ceases to work.
First is the problem that almost all Javascript programs on the web are proprietary software. So running a free browser just so you can download and execute proprietary software kind of defeats the point...
Second is the fact that Javascript programs are automatically downloaded and executed by the browser. Browsers have so far failed to really restrict the damage caused by this. It's no fluke that almost every remote code execution exploit these days starts with "First, the user's browser downloads and runs the malicious software supplied by an attacker. Then, ...".