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https://www.marketwatch.com/story/webs-creator-blasts-the-tech-giants-that-make-his-invention-easy-to-weaponize-2018-03-12
Web creator Tim Berners-Lee blasts Facebook, saying it makes his invention easy
to ‘weaponize’
Victor Reklaitis
“The fact that power is concentrated among so few companies has made it
possible to weaponize the web at scale.”
Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web
As the World Wide Web celebrated its 29th birthday last Monday, its creator
sounded disappointed about how his invention turned out — so he’s suggesting
regulators should crack down on tech giants.
What’s got Tim Berners-Lee riled up is the way dominant platforms such as
Facebook have used their popularity. The Oxford professor says the tools they
offer and the choices they make behind the scenes play too big a part in
steering the conversation — to the detriment of society.
“The web that many connected to years ago is not what new users will find
today,” Berners-Lee said in a blog post on Monday. “What was once a rich
selection of blogs and websites has been compressed under the powerful weight
of a few dominant platforms.”
“This concentration of power creates a new set of gatekeepers, allowing a
handful of platforms to control which ideas and opinions are seen and shared,”
he said.
The dominant players have cemented their position at the top by creating
barriers for competitors, hiring the tech industry’s top talent, and buying up
inventions and startup challengers, according to Berners-Lee.
The British computer scientist zeroed in on Facebook and Twitter: “The fact
that power is concentrated among so few companies has made it possible to
weaponize the web at scale. In recent years, we’ve seen conspiracy theories
trend on social media platforms, fake Twitter and Facebook accounts stoke
social tensions, external actors interfere in elections, and criminals steal
troves of personal data.”
The companies behind such platforms are trying to improve the state of affairs.
But there still may be a role for a legal or regulatory framework that takes
social objectives into account, Berners-Lee suggested.
“Today’s powerful digital economy calls for strong standards that balance the
interests of both companies and online citizens,” he wrote.
Berners-Lee gets credit for inventing the web 29 years ago this week because he
first presented a proposal for a system to connect computers in a network on
March 12, 1989. Vint Cerf and Robert E. Kahn are widely considered the fathers
of the internet.
In Berners-Lee’s view, it’s a myth that advertising is the only possible
business model for online companies, as is the idea that it’s too late to
change the way social-media platforms operate.
And the tech legend says the problems facing the web should be viewed as bugs —
problems in software that can be fixed.
“I want the web to reflect our hopes and fulfill our dreams, rather than
magnify our fears and deepen our divisions,” he said. “Let’s assemble the
brightest minds from business, technology, government, civil society, the arts
and academia to tackle the threats to the web’s future.”
Berners-Lee is hardly alone in fretting about Silicon Valley’s juggernauts.
Scott Galloway, founder of marketing company L2 and a New York University
professor, has called for breaking up Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon.
“A key part of a healthy economic cycle is pruning firms when they become
invasive, cause premature death, and won’t let other firms emerge,” Galloway
wrote in a recent Esquire piece. “The breakup of big tech should and will
happen, because we’re capitalists. It’s time.”
This story was first published on March 12, 2018.