Tim Berners-Lee: we must regulate tech firms to prevent 'weaponised' web
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Facebook is the main culprit in this. It could be forgiven that their algorithms amplified humans’ natural instincts towards divisiveness. But not being on top of the political advertisement on their platform is gross negligence bordering on intent: simply requiring transparency of sponsorship of political ads, as well as the groups being targeted, would have gone a long way in softening the calls for regulation we now see.
Simply using social media to campaign has never been the issue. There was never backlash against Obama for doing so. There’s precious little backlash against Sanders. The only real backlash has been against Trump, and aside from being Donald Trump, the only difference is that many of Trump’s social media supporters were secretly backed by the Russian government, and I don’t think transparency requirements would have stopped the Russian government.
This model has been shown to work fine with newspapers and other massmedia, but that's because there are competitors to jump to.
There is probably FAR more opportunity to building a Facebook competitor than a newspaper competitor nowadays.
Social networking is just one entry in the long list of Google's failures, many of which were successfully executed by smaller companies:
* Chat. Google has tried like 4 or 5 different times to do chat and ultimately lost out to the likes of WhatsApp, Slack, Messenger and others.
* Location/business Reviews. Despite having Maps, google still has yet to really come close to unseating Yelp in this arena.
* Wearables. Google Glass completely failed. Android Wear is well on its way to the grave. Fitbit, Apple and Samsung have all succeeded in wearables over Google.
* Augmented Reality. Remember Google Glass?
The list goes on. My point isn't that Google can't do anything right — that's obviously not true. What I'm saying is that Google trying something and failing isn't really a good argument against it being a viable idea.
Facebook's brand is ailing right now and I think there's growing concern about the way Facebook has been optimized to dominate the user's attention. There might be room for a social network that tries to be something much more minimal than what Facebook has become.
When google tried to go push '+' they needed the people to forget about the data, messages, pictures and everything else that was on facebook. That burden was a bit too much.
GDPR requires facebook to provide users with their data in a machine readable format. So that competitors could write migration scripts and there would be no such lock-in. Makes it easy to switch platforms and bring some competition into the space.
Art. 20 GDPR Right to data portability https://gdpr-info.eu/art-20-gdpr/
So the W3C has to accept DRM to prevent it being in a proprietary plugin, and Firefox had to also accept the DRM to avoid being "the browser that can't play Netflix", and everyone effectively has to go along with it to ensure they still have a seat at the table on the issue, but it all, at the end, comes back to the MPAA, which isn't going to let you have a license to stream their content unless it is locked with DRM, regardless of how futile DRM actually is.
I couldn't imagine Stallman, Doctorow, or anyone else with as deep a desire for open systems having that divergent a reaction to the one most galling topic in the whole discussion.
We do need the Stallmans of the world to be a counter balance, but we won't be able to have him run the entire world. Consider him kind of Galadriel, if you give him the one ring then the world will despair as they love him.
"Admire this man, this William Wallace. Uncompromising men are easy to admire. He has courage, so does a dog. But it is exactly the ability to compromise that makes a man noble."
Sir Berners-Lee is such a nobility, should we as digital peasants knee before him? Feudalism of the Web is upon us.
Aren't those EME modules basically proprietary plugins?
>Firefox's implementation of EME uses an open-source sandbox to load the proprietary DRM modules, which are treated as plug-ins that are loaded when EME-encrypted content is requested.
When you have a few big players they love to see regulations that make it harder for upstarts to enter the market since they won't have an army of employees who's only job is to ensure compliance with the bureaucratic demands.
Every regulation added to the Web/Internet, that a start-up has to comply with, is a benefit to the entrenched hyper rich giants. Regulators better be damn careful every time they lean toward giving in to emotionalism and seek to regulate as the easiest placation tool.
The US has seen a century of this scenario play out in every single major economic sector. We already know how it ends: stagnation, low growth, zero innovation, layoffs, and perpetual rent seeking rotting corporations with low competitive threats domestically.
I already felt the legal pressures from linking to facebook users profiles with a C & D[0] on bootstrapped company with a friend ($100k annualized in year 3), so I decided to move to Indonesia and will relaunch here.
>The US has seen a century of this scenario play out in every single major economic sector. We already know how it ends: stagnation, low growth, zero innovation, layoffs, and perpetual rent seeking rotting corporations with low competitive threats domestically.
Exactly, and in this day in age, it seems like even if one has the tech to compete, you can always be undermined by the incumbents dropping the ladders on the way up. Luckily, it's easier than ever to leverage other government's laws (or lack of jurisdiction) agaisnt one another.
That’s not to mention that regulators tend to be more cognizant of regulatory capture and their effects on the market than people give them credit for. That’s why you see revenue or other cutoffs in many regulations.
Two myths currently limit our collective imagination: the myth
that advertising is the only possible business model for
online companies, and the myth that it’s too late to change
the way platforms operate. On both points, we need to be a
little more creative.
Two myths currently limit our collective imagination: the myth that advertising is the only possible business model for online companies, and the myth that it’s too late to change the way platforms operate. On both points, we need to be a little more creative.
or it would just shift more of the web to non-funded.
This is both a problem and an opportunity.
That sounds like an argument against the ad model, not for it.
Common carriers for what?
Google and Facebook are by definition discriminators. You access Google so it can discriminate for you, and give you discriminated results that match what you're looking for, and not the entire internet.
You don't sign up for an ISP for discrimination, you sign up for access, so you want it to not discriminate at all.
ISPs provide access, social media and search provide aggregation. Trying to regulate both in the same is pointless.
By analogy, package (mail) is to packet (internet) is to post (social media). That's the common carrier connection I was trying to get at. ISPs and the postal service is not allowed to use discrimination to deny service to individuals because they don't like what they have to say.
Why would they, when no other company has to? Freedom of speech has nothing to do with others having to allow you to use their services for your speech.
> By analogy, package (mail) is to packet (internet) is to post (social media).
Sure, and email providers are free to block your emails. Or rank them.
I'm not getting your point, are you saying that internet companies should promote all posts equally?
The more you enforce your morality, the more the enforcement will be your executioner.