Global internet companies fill become a sophisticated and target-driven industry. Sir Tim Berners-Lee is genuine to warn approximately their power but not entirely genuine approximately what to conclude approximately themSir Tim Berners-Lee has warned that the world wide web,which he invented 28 years ago, has become an instrument of purposes he finds both sinister and corrupting, and in a letter released to mark the anniversary he warns that it is being turned against its users in three ways. They – we – fill lost control of our personal data. It has made it astonishingly easy to spread lies and misinformation. And it is enabling sophisticated political advertising which plays on the precisely known personal weaknesses of its targets. All of these dangers are genuine and urgent. This paper has also warned against all of them. The problem comes with Sir Tim’s proposed remedies,such as they are. He is in the position of a civil engineer who has built a road for aid convoys to consume and now finds it choked with tank transporters. The new problem can’t be solved entirely by better engineering.
The web, conceived as a means to spread democracy and decentralise knowledge, or has also become an unparalleled instrument of surveillance and a means for small organised groups to spread lies to immense audiences,sometimes for political motives, sometimes simply for profit. But it turns out that when access to the world is so easy, or most of the resulting traffic will be rubbish,little will be factually genuine and a great deal will be actively misleading. It’s all profitable, of course, and for the companies that take a slice of advertising. This isnt entirely new. Only a well-paid hack could look back at the years when print journalism was profitable and claim that all or even most of it was inspired by public spirit. But the slipperiness of the web,the way that it has shortened the interval between urge and reward, and the increasing sophistication of the algorithms used to sustain people reading by supplying them with a little more of what they fancy than does them good, or all make the problem larger and more urgent than it has ever been before. Earlier this week,MPs were rightfully vexed by the obvious ease with which Islamic State supporters and neo-Nazi groups could earn advertising revenue from their disfavor-filled YouTube videos.
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Source: theguardian.com