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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: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday April 05 2017, @04:21PM (5 children)
The good news about people being jackasses online: If they're busy being jackasses online, they aren't busy being jackasses offline. And while online harassment is a problem, it's less of a problem than real-world people-get-physically-hurt harassment.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 05 2017, @04:28PM (3 children)
I agree and disagree, online harassment can easily take a serious mental toll on many people. I doubt you're the type to mock someone who might get pushed over the edge of mental illness by people online, but with social media online harassment can easily be worse than in-person harassment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 05 2017, @05:35PM (1 child)
Your Father was a hamster and your mother smelled of elderberries!
Online harassment often comes with real world consequences get rid of things like facebork and we can go back to simple trolling but a lot of this stuff is being integrated into things that result in real physical violence and consequences in meat space, see the recent passwords please at the border
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 05 2017, @06:19PM
Yeah, back in the day geeks could vent their frustrations and get some kicks trolling people and it was kind of just the expected culture. Horrific name-calling was (and still is) common with online gaming, and lots of older geeks don't understand why some of the more horrific insults / smack talk gets a pissed off reaction. To them that was the expected behavior when gaming!
Anyway, facecrap and other social media platforms aren't going away so we should all just grow up a bit and stop treating the web like our personal playground. It is, but it now encompasses a huge percentage of society so common decency and all that now has greater importance.
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Wednesday April 05 2017, @07:42PM
However, realistically, the ceiling for potential damage and trauma is much greater in person. Have you ever had someone threaten to kill you, being completely serious about it? If you haven't, consider yourself lucky, and realize that it is probably scarier to be told "I'm going to kill you" by someone with a weapon in their hand, than it is to read "I'm going to kill you." on your computer screen.
If we can just be completely honest about things for two seconds here, I would think things should be very clear to you.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday April 05 2017, @05:39PM
I have a feeling the online jackasses are too cowardly to be offline jackasses.