For anyone jumping in, this is a contributor/opinion article, not forbes directly.
That being said, this is nonsense alarmism. It's not clear what the authors intent is aside from getting attention, but "the internet is scary and sometimes people are mean to children on it" isn't exactly a meaningful pitch.
I don't think Forbes does alarmist articles for the sake of alarmism. Here's how I am reading this.
It's an article geared towards the audience of Forbes, who are affluent highly educated, business-minded consumers of and investors in digital products. Which is a different audience from those frequenting Hackernews.
At it's core, the article paints an easy to grok good-vs-evil narrative by corralling billion-dollar corporations one side, and small grass-roots projects on the other side, the underdog. Then it ends with a cliffhanger "will the underdog win from the alpha dog?" leaving how the story might end open to the reader.
That unwritten conclusion should be clear to the reader: The decentralized web might create an investment opportunity. Incumbents are struggling with a perception problem, and under that vague umbrella of "dencentralized web" you'll find these new technologies that people might trust.
The article doesn't address the real issue: the lack of proper regulation. It just mentions that in the last paragraph, almost as a side note. Which basically acknowledges that the author(s) do have an understanding, but are simply choosing not to focus on that because it doesn't fit the narrative.
Lambasting TBL's initial vision of the Web as "pollyannic" and then not even mentioning him as an important instigator of the decentralized Web - linked data, Semantic Web, Inrupt/Solid,... - is just another clue that the authors are just interested in their colored narrative of the history.
> this is a contributor/opinion article, not forbes directly.
That's a super lame excuse by Forbes. Is it under Forbes domain? Is it approved by Forbes editorial staff? Yes and yes, thus it's a Forbes piece.
Why I am emphasizing this? Because I am really annoyed by offloading certain opinions and shaking off the responsibility of the quality of the content published unto "independent" contributions.
Lots of publishers have taken this route recently such as Guardian, Forbes, Bloomberg (this one upsets me the most) and others in favour of getting some cheap pageviews.
Well, if that's the route they are taking, at least they deserve to be named as crappy content publishers.
Forbes is doing in many ways what newspapers like the NY times are doing. When NY times posts an opinion article, it may well be something they entirely disagree with - and that's OK. That doesn't mean there are no standards (can't go against the guidelines for acceptable content ala hate speech) but if it's clearly marked as an opinion, it's just that.
That's fine. But that content should be counted as theirs. You cannot have it both ways - pretend that you are quality publisher and then publish crappy content.
That being said, this is nonsense alarmism. It's not clear what the authors intent is aside from getting attention, but "the internet is scary and sometimes people are mean to children on it" isn't exactly a meaningful pitch.