I get a feeling of mild confusion after reading this article, because he keeps juggling between the Internet as a technology, the web as the sum total of linkable resources (or maybe the synonym for the Internet; I am not entirely sure), and specific internet companies.
> We need a free and open web for everyone.
Right. But at the same time:
> internet companies must play their part in making sure the web is safe, accessible and protects user data
So, when Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc. banned Alex Jones (probably in the spirit of making the web "safe"), how did they advance the cause of "free and open web for everyone"? Why don't deranged conspiracy theorists (who certainly belong into the all-encompassing category of "everyone") deserve free and open web too?
"Free and open for everyone" should also mean no more attacks on Russia for using Facebook or Twitter to influence the opinions of the American public. Because "free and open for everyone" has no concept of national borders. And yet, Tim managed to combine the rhetoric of universal freedom and openness with the rhetoric of state sovereignty, borders, and us-theming ("foreign" interference, etc.)
Also, as pointed out in other comments, the goal of "free and open" internet does not align very well with the purpose of many media companies or content producers in general, who want to be compensated for their work.
I am very much a child of the promise of free and open internet. So when I see articles like this, it confuses the hell out of me.
After WWII, the newly created state of Israel offered Albert Einstein to run for president.
Mr. Einstein, being exceptionally bright, declined the offer, saying something like: "I'm but a physicist, and am not qualified in the areas of statesmanship".
Maybe the disagreement is over what "free and open internet" means. Imo,it does not mean an internet governed by rules that supersede local laws and norms. Free means additional restrictions on lawful self-expression should not be imposed and it also means freedom for site owners and content creators,not just content consumers. It means content providers are free to exclude anyone for any lawful reason. I think you might be confusing free as in freedom from free as in no cost to consumers.
Open means initial access to content should not be for a select group of people but for everyone. It also means content producers have open access to content consumers. Both consumers and producers can restrict access at will(for example content moderation or DNT requests).
For media companies,a free and open internet means a wide reach to consumers. If you meant free as in financial cost,it all depends on their business model. Ad supported is one model,another would be to use the free content as bait that lures consumers to a revenue generating product,be it premium content,premium experience and features or goods.
For the whole "russian trolls" issue,being free and open isn't what allowed the problem. "Russian trolls" can pay for oremium content and find ways to access restricted content and post messages masquerading as allowed users. Imo,user targeted advertising is the problem. "Russian trolls" would not be all that effective if they were not able to target specific groups of people and exploit their biases.
I think content-targeting (see what duckduckgo does) has a strong case against user-targeting. It maybe less profitable but it is stable and most reliable in the long term.
I see a promising future for content being supported by premium users and content targeting and a bleak future for the dystopian corporate surveillance madness.
"
In recent years, it has become clear that the web is not living up to the high hopes we had for it.
...
These worries are justified. In recent years, we’ve seen governments engage in state-sponsored trolling to quash dissent and attack opposition. We’ve seen hacking and foreign interference distort politics and undermine elections. And we’ve seen how the spread of fake news on social media can trigger chaos, confusion and lethal violence."
1. The web is one of mankind's greatest inventions: a mirror of society in a cyber world. It has greatly surpassed all expectations, and is The Highlight of the 20th and 21st centuries.
2. Fake news, hacking, foreign interference: nothing new under the sun. Democracy has major flaws which all governments take advantage of.
I understand where mr. Tim Berners-Lee comes from, but it feels so simplistic, even naive to propose something which various governments will not even read or comment on.
The true battle lies in changing society.
Without overhauling democracy, we'll still be faced with voting issues. Without overhauling the press, we'll still get mass disinformation.
And so on...
"The Internet was done so well that most people think of it as a natural resource like the Pacific Ocean, rather than something that was man-made. When was the last time a technology with a scale like that was so error-free? The Web, in comparison, is a joke. The Web was done by amateurs."
- Alan Kay
What's so great about the web, that makes you say it is one of mankind's greatest inventions? I get that you think it is a "mirror of society," but is that very great? AFAIK, the web is mostly used to 1) browse memes and 2) get informed on new things to be outraged about. I'm genuinely curious what expectations you see the web as having "greatly surpassed."
" AFAIK, the web is mostly used to 1) browse memes and 2) get informed on new things to be outraged about."
Well that's an argument from ignorance if I ever heard one. Much of anything I've ever learned is from the internet (
e.g. Wikipedia, books, oddly specific youtube vidoes on car repair), and I'd have a much harder time in my career without the amount of material on Math/CS online. One can literally find top level educational material for free, whether from sources like MIT opencourseware or the many textbooks freely available. I'm sure other people have found great uses for the web too.
I do this too. I learned pretty much every valuable skill I have using resources freely available online.
In my experience, this is pretty uncommon though. I know only a few people that use the web this way, and a lot who browse the front page of reddit, watch whatever videos show up in their FB feed or on the front page of YouTube, etc.
The resources are there, but are they used enough to make my statement regarding what the web is mostly used for invalid? I don't know.
For the month of September 2018, OCW reported 1.09M unique visitors [1]. In their 2017 annual report, Facebook reported 2.13B monthly active users [2]. I suspect the comparisons between coursers, edx, udemy, etc and reddit, Twitter, memes, etc would be similar, and three orders of magnitude seems sufficient to say "most."
If you think your web use is typical, perhaps it is you in the bubble.
Yeah, I concede that it's greatly surpassed in terms of volume. And that bubble probably wasn't the correct term.
However, my comment was more arguing against what you said with the context in a previous comment:
"What's so great about the web, that makes you say it is one of mankind's greatest inventions?"
-I don't believe that an invention being used largely for unhelpful uses makes the (still large) amount of benefit any smaller. So, even if educational use is dwarfed by facebook, it's is still a wonderful tool for many.
I disagree, however, because my opinion is that the trillions of hours spent are not simply unhelpful (i.e. neutral) but actually damaging. My calculation is therefore that the net impact of the web is maybe negative, because the positives are swamped by the greater volume of negatives.
As much as I agree with Tim's premise, this article is mostly useless politicking. The internet suffers from a combination of the tragedy of the commons and what I call tragedy of the new world. [1] The tragedy also afflicts governments, corporations, and foundations. Excuse me if I am skeptical that governments and organizations will fix their inherent issues reflected by the internet. Tim asking politely will not be enough I'm afraid. Meanwhile I'm relatively happy in my current, non-abusive world of HN!
The tragedy of the new world is a cycle where a group of smart, resource people start a platform that solves some glaring problems. The platform works beautifully and a thriving community of smart, resourceful people come in gathers. More problems arise and are squashed like a game of Whac-A-Mole. Eventually the founders lose their inspiration, quit, retire or die. The remaining members, now of much increased size and diluted merit, cling to processes left behind. As time passes these processes devolve into tradition, ritual, or meme. Due to some unforeseeable change in the structure of the original problem, the rituals stop working. For as long as possible, the members (of much increased size and diluted merit) continue to attempt shoving a square problem through a round process. Eventually a new body of leaders, also of much increased size and diluted merit, come up with a high dimensional hyper plane process to solve the problem. High dimensional hyper planes are impossible for humans to visualize so most don’t understand why the square problem doesn’t fit. After much scratching of heads, the platform dies as people leave to dilute the merit of the new world.
I don’t think the web has changed and I think HN is the perfect testament to that opinion.
Almost all of the interesting content I consume online comes from personal self-build blogs, HN or real news papers like the NYT.
I don’t think the content is worse, especially not when you pay for news. Now the NYT is a poor example of this, but the Danish equivalents, Information and Weekendavisen are not, in that one turns off it’s advertising when you subscribe and the other is simply not available for free.
I think in terms of the internet, you get what you pay for. For news the price is money, on HN the price is your ability to be relevant and fair and on personal blogs the price is the time it takes to find them, support them and make interesting responses to them.
The key thing that has changed for me, is how to find interesting things. HN is really the only option I know of, unless you get extremely lucky on a search engine. Because modern search results are so influenced by Alexa rankings and advertising that they very rarely lead you to the gems on the net. I do think the amount of shitty content on the internet, and unregulated/moderated social media makes the problem a lot worse, because it’s harder to find interesting things in an ocean of shit. But ultimately, I think there are as many interesting things on the net as there has always been.
I do find it interesting, that none of the websites I love the most, are powered by any of the popular JavaScript frameworks, well aside from the NYT, but to be fair, the thing I dislike the most about the NYT is it’s intrusive JS.
> I think in terms of the internet, you get what you pay for.
I'm coming round to this perspective. After years of reading "free" news sources I decided to experiment with paid sources. I subscribed to the Times (UK newspaper) and the Economist. The difference in content-quality and design is immense. I particularly like the Times's website compared to the Guardian and other free online newspapers.
As an example, the Times publishes stories in daily editions, much like a traditional newspaper. They may be updated throughout the day, but, as a paywalled publication, there is no pressure on it to publish a constant stream of hot takes and low-grade commentary (as you find in The Guardian) throughout the day to get eyeballs on adverts.
It was apparent to me a long time ago that most of the web was just a massive direct marketing platform. At the moment I pay for email and news but I expect the set of information and resources I pay for in the future will expand.
However, paying for news doesn't really solve the "fake news" issue as fake is in the eye of the beholder.
> poorly researched clickbait or got take opinion columns
Sounds more like the Guardian than the Times. Why would the Times need to publish clickbait? Its articles are behind a paywall and it doesn't have advertising?
It certainly does have advertising - it's comment is written for the print version, and readers can still read two articles a month (with advertising) without subscribing.
It has the ill researched bigotry from the likes of Janice Turner whipping up populist hatred of sexual minorities, and a series of impossibly bad technology reporting echoing the lobby lines of the current government based on nothing more than a vendetta against online companies for business reasons.
> I do think the amount of shitty content on the internet, and unregulated/moderated social media makes the problem a lot worse, because it’s harder to find interesting things in an ocean of shit
The change is not that the good content is gone, it's that the noise level has risen significantly. That "ocean of shit" is the change you don't think exists.
Indeed. A few weeks ago I went to youtube.com and was met with horrible videos (clickbait, fake news, yellow journalism, reaction videos, et al) on offer until I realized that I was logged out and it was showing me what the general public sees. I hadn't seen that before.
Berners-Lee lost me when he supported EME. Basically, I view that as a coordinated infrastructure (the political component) that allows for a "universal" technological lockdown (the engineering component -- weaponized by the political coordination and corresponding universal dissemination).
In other words, you will never save the Internet from authoritarian bozos, when they hold the keys -- that you manufactured for them.
You want to talk about saving the Internet? You have to own the physical layer -- keep it open. The rest is filtering.
Now, to RTFA, I suppose.
Oh, another example of what I'm saying: The Great Firewall of China was prototyped and initially built using Western technology and expertise. That bootstrapped them; it "gave them the keys".
The Chinese authorities have understood very well and increasingly effectively use this: Control of the physical layer.
And, they're exporting turnkey systems for this.
Maybe that's what "saving the Internet" looks like, for some people. The censored Internet. The one that tells you what's ok to build and to say -- that sooner or later butts up against innovation, dynamism, needed change and progress.
> Let’s make 2019 the year we push back against the forces subverting the open spirit of the web.
I used to like TBL, but I can no longer take him seriously when he says stuff like this, after his decision[0] to allow DRM/EME[1] into the web standards. It just rings hollow.
OR, you know, we could make the web gradually end to end encrypted and decentralize the back end from being federated as it is now. Why do we need DNS, seriously? It’s just a glorified search engine that can only get you to the front page of a site. The vast majority of links to resources on the web may as well be non human readable.
I look forward to a time when software is client-side, things are only ever decrypted client-side, social networking is basically automated key sharing, contact lists are private, keys never leave the device and group activities are all written in Javascript and done by consensus of the participants.
Are the security and privacy properties of Qbix dependent on Javascript cryptography? How do you handle JS package dependency and integrity management?
TL;DR Tim Bernes-Lee wants governments and companies to sign a "Contract for the Web" document outlining a set of principles about the Internet.
"Berners-Lee said the full terms of the contract would be agreed in the coming months, with the objective to finalize it in May 2019 - the 50/50 moment when more than half of the world's population will be online for the first time."
Thanks for the succinct sumary, even having read the article it provides a good starting point for discussion in it's content.
This is the bit I'm worried about, alongside Tim's reference to fake news earlier in the article:
>They make it clear that individual citizens have a responsibility to act with compassion and challenge negative behavior they wouldn’t tolerate offline
'They' being governments and institutions, who Tim want to make responsible for policing free speech. If this isn't going to be a horrible, apocalyptically bad mistake "acting with compassion" and "negative behavior" had better be very carefully defined.
The Economist published an article earlier this year by an Ahmadi Muslim arguing that Geert Wilders' cartoon contest for depictions of Mohamed should be banned. I can undertand abhorrence to such an abusive stunt, but as I pointed out in a comment on the article, Ahmadiyas themselves have been persecuted in Pakistan of 'insulting Mohamed' because their beliefs about him contradict Sunni teachings. When one person's religious belief is another person's heresy, you have to be very careful about how you go about 'challenging negative behaviour'. Bear in mind the governments Tim wants to enlist in doing this include Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, etc, etc.
Fake news is a devilishly difficult thing to define, as is negative behaviour. Tread softly Tim!
What is it exactly that we want to save? Bloated browsers so complex that not even MS can keep up with development? Shitty web apps needing obscene amounts of resources and power just to lock you in into web services? Clickbait journalism, a monopolistic attention economy, privacy invasion, surveillance, censorship, influencers, and propaganda?
I guess the conclusion is that the web is only as valuable as the content delivered over it, but has no inherent value of its own, or even a net-negative value. We should salvage valuable content off the web, and take stuff we want to keep elsewhere. We should create new content in a way that isn't locked to the web.
You mean a interroperable, international standard based information plateform sharing the vast humanity has access to "has no inherent value of its own" ? I call BS on this one.
Anything that's worth something is imperfect. Not the other way around.
The Internet has changed the world and just ignoring it won't change it back. We won't be able to completely evade the tiresome phenomena you mention, either on the web or irl. I still have a faint hope we might be able to carve out a niche where we can use the web without falling prey to these things more than absolutely unavoidable. However, the masses have spoken and it seems glaringly obvious that they don't give a rodent's backside.
The masses have done no such thing though, if you really think about it. New people get born every day, they still get to speak. People can change their minds, they still get to speak.
And it's not like we're talking about informed decisions by people making free choices, there's all sorts of pushiness. The war on general computing isn't waged by the average person, they're the victim of it.
Easy for some to say. Billions of people rely on the current web, because it’s functions have replaced the previous traditions and infrastructures. Highly mobile folks will pack up and go elsewhere, leaving the masses to suffer under the list of features you mention. I think what we should be saving is the functionality society as a whole depends on. This is not so easily done.
He posts on Twitter instead of his own blog. Saving the web is pretty simple: post to your own blog and stop using closed silos like Facebook and Twitter. Support IndieWeb tech instead of calling for government regulation.
Also, why is Facebook considered the web? Unless you’re a member the content isn’t accessible. Facebook exposes practically no HTML on the web at all.
> We need a free and open web for everyone.
Right. But at the same time:
> internet companies must play their part in making sure the web is safe, accessible and protects user data
So, when Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc. banned Alex Jones (probably in the spirit of making the web "safe"), how did they advance the cause of "free and open web for everyone"? Why don't deranged conspiracy theorists (who certainly belong into the all-encompassing category of "everyone") deserve free and open web too?
"Free and open for everyone" should also mean no more attacks on Russia for using Facebook or Twitter to influence the opinions of the American public. Because "free and open for everyone" has no concept of national borders. And yet, Tim managed to combine the rhetoric of universal freedom and openness with the rhetoric of state sovereignty, borders, and us-theming ("foreign" interference, etc.)
Also, as pointed out in other comments, the goal of "free and open" internet does not align very well with the purpose of many media companies or content producers in general, who want to be compensated for their work.
I am very much a child of the promise of free and open internet. So when I see articles like this, it confuses the hell out of me.