Tim Berners-Lee has lost the plot | Hacker News Reader

Tim Berners-Lee has lost the plot

inquisitr.com

16 pointsterpua15 comments

TBLs idea of a "web of trustworthiness" is not new, it has always been one of the applications in his vision of the semantic web. One of the properties of this vision is that the "trust-graphs" will be decentralized - there will not be a single authoritative trust-rating pr site. (Whether we believe this vision will ever come to fruition is a different issue).

> the idea [...] needs to die quickly before repressive governments, and those that nearly are, use his words as an excuse to censor and filter the internet further.

Yeah right, as if repressive goverments need an excuse from TBL to censor the internet. Anyway, they are certainly not going to wait for the realization of "the semantic web" to start censoring.

I like this comment left on his blog:

"I respectfully disagree with your entire thesis. No one is saying we should stifle a "false opinion." No one is saying that we won't allow people to publish posts or blogs as they do today, on any topic they chose. The premise is that we should be able to easily identify credible news. Yes, credibility has subjective aspects but there are objective components as well - and those are the ones we can easily address using the websites you deem so useless. Objective fact checking, citation of sources, transparency - these are things we can and should measure. By merely introducing a 'scorecard' or a 'track record' for a news source, I don't think we've crossed the line to "global totalitarianism."

I will defend your right to have an opinion, but I think you will find I am not alone in thinking that it is you, Duncan, who may have lost the plot."

Disagreeing with him is just one step away from totalitarianism! The government's here and they're installing the 1984-style cameras in my flat right now. Look what you've done!

It's articles like this for which I wish there was a downmod button.

How is what TBL suggesting different in spirit from PageRank, or web of trust, etc? Giving people some metadata isn't going to "be the start of a slippery slope towards global totalitarianism." Article seems a little bit overzealous.

Agreed. Duncan, however, is effectively calling my startup bullshit. I'm glad the commenters on his site (and here) disagree with him.

Your business as a voluntary, optional rating system is great. But if credibility ratings were mandatory, how would dissenting voices be heard?

Millions of people supporting the McCain-Palin ticket in the United States believe that the earth is 4000 years old and dinosaurs and men existed side-by-side.

No, they don't. The writer of this article is as ignorant as the imaginary people he is attacking.

As someone who grew up evangelical, I assure you that the only inaccuracy in the statement is that millions believe the earth is 6000 years old (i.e. 4000BCE). My estimate is that 25-50% of youth and 50-75% of the 40+ crowd in the churchgoing population believe this.

And I can say that in my denomination (Reformed Presbyterian, which is theologically conservative) the percentages are far, far lower. My own congregation includes several university professors (CMU, U Pittsburgh) that are not Young Earth Creationists. Heck, we even had a geology prof in the congregation for awhile, and he certainly wasn't.

I don't consider our denomination "evangelical," but I'm sure the general public would.

EDIT: I'm not trying to start a religious/cultural war...just want to point out that saying things like "50-75% of the churchgoing population" is a bit of a broad generalization.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. While it's true that Catholics and members of the mainline Protestant denominations are unlikely to believe dinosaurs and men lived together, there are still millions of other more conservative religous people out there. I did a quick Google search and found that there are about 16 million Southern Baptists, 6 million Mormons, 3 million members of the Assemblies of God, and 2.5 million members of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod (whose doctrine statement supports young Earth creationism). So there are easily 30 - 40 millions of these kind of people in America. Now most young-Earthers probably haven't thought much about dinosaurs and people living together, but they do believe in the story of Noah and the ark and that the Earth is about six to ten thousand years old, and it would only follow from that. So what percent of these 40 million are voting for Palin and also believe dinosaurs and people lived together? Easily five percent, but I'd wager it's closer to 50-75%.

I think Duncan Riley is in over his head on this one. His argument is basically that if we permit organized rating of web sites, that governments will use the system to stifle unpopular opinion. That's a reasonable theory but I think it breaks down when you realize Google has been rating the value of web sites for years, and so have other entities with arguably a net positive effect. What Tim Berners-Lee is proposing is a tool, run by a bunch of what he considers to be credible organizations, and while we may worry they won't do a good job I don't think it's clear that the cure is worse than the disease.

>Google has been rating the value of web sites for years

Well, supposedly, they don't do that. We all are (links). They just do the tally. ...and abuse the tally system from time to time (wiki/knol)

Speaking of online credibility...

Here's a past post and comments by Duncan Riley (the article's author) from techcrunch. Judge for yourselves:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/29/its-fair-to-say-that-ge...

I find it interesting how a "trust rating" would affect traditional media outlets, all of whom now publish scores of content online. A rating system wouldn't just discredit LHC doomsday sites, but could potentially be a positive source of pressure for TV news, newspapers, and magazines as well.

Anyway, I agree Duncan is being a spaz and that TBL's idea isn't completely absurd. I imagine something like a Firefox plugin for factcheck.org.

"Do not those of us in free countries benefit from receiving news that isn’t filtered and controlled by the corporate media elite?"

... Sounds naive.

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