Tim Berners-Lee Launches Campaign To Save the Web From Abuse (theguardian.com) 179
Tim Berners-Lee has launched a global campaign to save the web from the destructive effects of abuse and discrimination, political manipulation, and other threats that plague the online world. A report adds: In a talk at the opening of the Web Summit in Lisbon on Monday, the inventor of the web called on governments, companies and individuals to back a new "Contract for the Web" that aims to protect people's rights and freedoms on the internet. The contract outlines central principles that will be built into a full contract and published in May 2019, when half of the world's population will be able to get online. More than 50 organisations have already signed the contract, which is published by Berners-Lee's World Wide Web Foundation alongside a report that calls for urgent action.
"For many years there was a feeling that the wonderful things on the web were going to dominate and we'd have a world with less conflict, more understanding, more and better science, and good democracy," Berners-Lee told the Guardian. "But people have become disillusioned because of all the things they see in the headlines. Humanity connected by technology on the web is functioning in a dystopian way. We have online abuse, prejudice, bias, polarisation, fake news, there are lots of ways in which it is broken. This is a contract to make the web one which serves humanity, science, knowledge and democracy." Under the principles laid out in the document, which Berners-Lee calls a "Magna Carta for the web", governments must ensure that its citizens have access to all of the internet, all of the time, and that their privacy is respected so they can be online "freely, safely and without fear." Berners-Lee, added, "We're at a 50/50 moment for the web. We've created something amazing together, but half the world is still not online, and our online rights and freedoms are at risk. The web has done so much for us, but now we need to stand up #ForTheWeb." You can watch his talk here (skip the first 10 minutes).
"For many years there was a feeling that the wonderful things on the web were going to dominate and we'd have a world with less conflict, more understanding, more and better science, and good democracy," Berners-Lee told the Guardian. "But people have become disillusioned because of all the things they see in the headlines. Humanity connected by technology on the web is functioning in a dystopian way. We have online abuse, prejudice, bias, polarisation, fake news, there are lots of ways in which it is broken. This is a contract to make the web one which serves humanity, science, knowledge and democracy." Under the principles laid out in the document, which Berners-Lee calls a "Magna Carta for the web", governments must ensure that its citizens have access to all of the internet, all of the time, and that their privacy is respected so they can be online "freely, safely and without fear." Berners-Lee, added, "We're at a 50/50 moment for the web. We've created something amazing together, but half the world is still not online, and our online rights and freedoms are at risk. The web has done so much for us, but now we need to stand up #ForTheWeb." You can watch his talk here (skip the first 10 minutes).
2EZ (Score:1, Informative)
If you want to make the web great again, just stop allowing humans to use it. Simple.
Frost whis (Score:3)
My first wish is for you to get back in that bottle. My second is for you to stay there.
Doesn't matter what the third one is - it's as likely to come true as the others.
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My first wish is for you to get back in that bottle. My second is for you to stay there.
Doesn't matter what the third one is - it's as likely to come true as the others.
Didn't you hear? Blockchain will put the genie back in the bottle.
Well, OK, technically it's blockchain with a sprinkling of dark matter blended with the Mandela effect and red-wine vinega...damn, I've said too much.
"It" is the people, not the system (Score:4, Insightful)
Computers are amplifiers of humanity, be the manifestation stupidity, racism, abuse, meanness, kindness, charity, good-heartedness, etc. You name it. The problem isn't the internet, the problem is certain types of people. PEOPLE use the internet. Berners-Lee means well and that is a good start, but he is hacking at the branches of a tree that we would all like to cut down. The quotes sound like is equating fixing the internet with fixing people. Not gonna happen that way.
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If computers are the amplifiers of humanity, then networks are the attenuators.
Right now openness, transparency, and truth are overly attenuated. It didn't used to be that way, alt.pave.the.earth being a past humorous exception.
Anonymity, location hiding, and special interest groups are destroying what people like Dr. Berners-Lee intended.
I sincerely hope he can achieve some level of success in his effort to fix what he helped create and what lesser humans have distorted.
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Do we have to fix people, or just limit the damage they can do?
To take a real world example we can discourage behaviour like violence by creating consequences for it. We can limit the damage someone is able to do by verifying identity before allowing money to be withdrawn from a bank account.
I'm not saying we should do exactly the same online, but for example many services offer tools to block/mute abusive users and phishing scams, including controversial shadow bans. It's worth having a conversation about
Bwahahaha (Score:2, Flamebait)
Oh you sweet naive man, do you also believe in rainbow shitting unicorns and santa claus?
what a waste of time
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You prove what I'm saying with the first phrase of your reply. Thanks for the validation of what I said.
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It has stuff like "make the web cheap to use and ubiquitous" and then it has stuff about what content should be on the web. Well, I already know what kind of content these guys don't want on the web- anything that is unprofitable to them, anything that they politically disagree with. It's just a bunch of censorship dressed up like it's there to protect you.
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Keep all of the internet available, all of the time
Translation: The Pirate Bay is back!
Make the internet affordable and accessible to everyone
Smells like Net Neutrality.
Respect consumers’ privacy and personal data
A good sentiment if a bit vague and high-level
Not so sure about this one:
Build strong communities that respect civil discourse and human dignity
Again this is rather vague. It's fine if people build communities where participants are encouraged to remain civil and respectful... and even ban people who do not comply. We already have that. But what if we want PornHub and 4Chan as well? What happens if a community decides not to play ball and remains a foul-mouthed spreader of undi
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Absolutely. Now, pardon me I'm about to drive my car through your house, while gunning down anyone I see. After all, any interference in my freedom to do that would be a compromise, and thus prove that freedom does not exist.
In case you missed it, that was sarcasm. The entirety of civilization is built on the compromise of freedoms in exchange for safety, efficiency, etc. As the old saying goes - My freedom to swing my arms stops where your nose begins.
Re:Fuck TBL. (Score:5, Funny)
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You are the problem. Conflating speech(words) with violence(physically harming someone/something)
Also giving up freedoms for "safety" has worked so well since 9/11.. That's part of the resentment people have that end up voting for Trump.
The politicians will use "for the childers" to gain as much power as they can until it's too late.
--Highdude702
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totalitarians equate speech with action because it can punch holes in their broken ideologies.
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Why is free speech in the very first amendment in the bill of rights? Because it is the most powerful, the most dangerous to government, and thus the most necessary to be protected. Guns are important in overthrowing tyranny, but without the speech to impassion people to fight and die over an ideal, they're not worth a damned thing.
Words hold awesome power to reshape the world - little else ever has. Those who claim free speech as an important bastion democracy, while belittling its power to cause harm,
free speech or PC speech (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:free speech or PC speech (Score:5, Interesting)
Excellent points! I would also add:
* Who defines what is offensive?
* What is or isn't offensive? (The person receiving it??)
Also what if someone is offended by the truth (such as China's retarded ban on the number 64 -- a reference to the 1989 Tiananmen Square murder -- does national Law trump Censorship ?
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Why does the bar have to be "offensive"? Why not "violates privacy" e.g. doxing and revenge porn?
Whatever the solution it's going to need to support spam filtering.
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Saying they should not be here because they are murders, or lazy, needs evidence that they are more so than the currently population.
Not true at all. Did we prove Mohamad Atta and the other 9/11 hijackers were more violent than the population before they killed 3000? No
Did many of them overstay visas illegally? Yes
So you are arguing that 3000+ being killed is acceptable in order to not possibly offend people. We also have Kate Steinle killed by an individual illegal that wouldn't tip their numbers to be generally more violent, but according to your logic her death is acceptable because calling them out might offend someone.
How about
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No. You might have a reading problem; please ask your English teacher.
Nobody gives a fuck about offending people, Let's take Atta as an example, and suppose it's September 10, 2001. Unless you are part of the conspiracy, you have no reason to believe that Atta is violent. (If you think you do, please explain, because it means you are smarter than everyone who worked in the US government at the time.)
And since y
Re:free speech or PC speech (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the discussion needs to be based on truthfulness not inoffensiveness. Saying illegal immigrants should not be here because they are illegal is fine. Saying they should not be here because they are murders, or lazy, needs evidence that they are more so than the currently population. I think we need more evidence based discussion not just people stating random opinions, or give examples, sure there are examples of migrant workers being murders, there are also examples locals as well.
All the examples of PC speech I can think of are attempts at dodging the truth or smearing someone with negative labels for stating the truth (ie Nazi, racist, etc). If people had the truth on their side in the first place 'PC' wouldn't be needed.
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Equally, most of the anti-PC speech I can think of is just attempts to smear and shut people down. Accuse them of calling you a Nazi, call them an SJW, demand your freedom of speech...
Discussion of anything controversial quickly gets derailed by people wailing "help help I'm being oppressed!" like a Monty Python sketch. They are usually careful to get their argument in before saying "but you can't say that any more" even though they just did.
Instead of complaining about it, just make your argument. If someo
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Equally, most of the anti-PC speech I can think of is just attempts to smear and shut people down. Accuse them of calling you a Nazi, call them an SJW, demand your freedom of speech...
Strange. Because we've just had an entire platform shutdown by moral busybodies because they allow offensive but legal speech. These are the same people who make the argument that "free speech is violent speech." I'm reminded of the early days of 8chan, including yourself where you claimed that it was "a pedo site and should be shutdown" this is PC speech, with a lie added in. You didn't like that it had material while offensive, was legal under US law. You openly stated that people who used the site wer
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You mean Gab? It's back up. Once again, I'll ask you a simple question: Would you force people to host Gab and supply it with services?
As for calling people Nazi's... I notice Lywood Rooster is just the latest Slashdot conservative to start calling liberals Nazis. His current signature associates liberal/socialist policies with Nazism in a most disingenuous way.
This is the hard right playbook. Accuse you of doing what they are doing themselves. They have no shame, they aren't bothered if you call them out.
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You mean Gab? It's back up. Once again, I'll ask you a simple question: Would you force people to host Gab and supply it with services?
I would if they want to be held harmless for the content they host. If you're pruning content them you're liable for what remains. Want to be held harmless - then leave it all alone.
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And how far down the chain does this go? For example if the card payment processor didn't want to handle billing for the host because of Gab? Or if your office manager decided to block it at work?
And what if Gab decided they couldn't be bothered to police illegal images on their site, would they still have to be hosted? Is the cut off just illegal material, and if so under what jurisdiction, or can other forms of abuse be banned too? Gab has banned spammers and trolls in the past, for example.
I don't mean t
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What would your bill of rights include?
I'd start with defining the limits of free speech, e.g. spammers can't hide behind it to avoid getting blocked, asshats can't use it to set mobs on people.
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asshats can't use it to set mobs on people.
Wow...really huh? The political left would be fucked, that's their main way to go after people who have contrary opinions on various things. I'm sure you can start with the "oh but not really..." gonna remind you about all those social justice movements that go after people for having the wrong opinions, or making a politically incorrect viewpoint, or daring to donate to a campaign against gay marriage.
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It's almost like I don't approve of mobbing?!?!? Strange huh.
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The focus is always on offence, but it's a straw man. Triggered snowflakes are easy to argue against, doxing and silencing not so much.
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There is a middle ground - courteous speech. If I'm at the bar and see someone I don't like, I can go give them a ration of shit, and maybe chase them off, or maybe get a punch in the nose for my trouble. Having immediate potential repercussions for discourteous speech is one of the biggest differences between real-life and online conversations. Perhaps we need to bring that online.
Not necessarily as a top-down "official rules of conduct" sort of situation, such a thing is far too vulnerable to being used
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Free speech was never about saying anything you wanted without consequence - just about not letting the government silence you. In person, the threat of a punch in the face generally acts as sufficient deterrent against the most egregious breaches of common courtesy, online we clearly need something to take over that roll.
Not saying my idea is the solution, but it's something off the cuff that would be very simple to implement.
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You know who else uses violence to silence people the disagree with? Fascists. Congratulations, you just invented online fascism. Nice idea you came up with there.
Seriously, how do you have the complete lack of self-awareness to think up these things?
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Also having high karma here, I've got to say the whole karma thing is apparently set up more as a game than anything else. Could it be made workable if the goal was actually just to silence the really undesirables? I suspect so.
One option would be to raise the cost of starting a new account. That would to a large degree happen automatically on a social networking site, since unlike here where everyone posts in a single thread, social networking sites are all about networking - until you've built up a net
Re:free speech or PC speech (Score:4, Insightful)
Give us the right to offend. Not because we want to offend. But to ensure that no one can silence us simply by claiming to be offended.
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âoeInternet media should spread positive information, uphold the correct political direction, and guide public opinion toward the right direction,â the state-run Xinhua news service reported in April, summarizing the instructions of Mr. Xi, who âoestressed the centralized, unified leadership of the Party over cybersecurity.â
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You really can't have both. Don't believe me?
Given that your comment is currently sitting at a +5 rating shows you can. If you would have talked about rapists and murderers coming over the boarder, that'd be another story and you'd probably get modded flamebait.
The entire problem with online conversation is the lack of any meaningful user moderation, and instead we get Facebook or Twitter trying to play the role of judge when really it should be up to other users.
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"Build strong communities that respect civil discourse and human dignity"
Its pretty simple really.
Might not want (Score:1, Troll)
If you can't not act and talk like a racist, or react only based on fear
You might want to take a REAL long look in the mirror buddy.
Because all I see from Democrats these days is action based on fear, mostly in support of various kinds of racism that are deemed preferable. Including accusing a supreme court justice of rape because you feared him.
When you stop acting from a position of fear, perhaps then voters will be willing to listen to you once more.
Re:free speech or PC speech (Score:4, Informative)
I can't tell if you're an extremist that has blinders on, or you're a troll trying to rile people up. Your response only lends more weight to liquid_schwartz's point.
Someone being here illegally is not dependent on their skin color. You haven't show anything to explain how liquid_schwartz's post is racist; you saw something you didn't like, and so you tried to shut it down by yelling "racist". That only works so many times (see: the boy that cried wolf). Stop belittling that word.
That's great that you care about immigrants. Doing what you did doesn't help anything, and only causes further problems.
You're a part of the problem, not a solution. You should really think about trying to turn that around.
Step 1: Tim Berners-Lee stop what you're doing (Score:3)
You may act like you're here to save the day Tim, but intelligent people know better. Keep your personal political bullshit out of it and go find a new hobby.
The A bomb (Score:2)
Wanting Governments to give up easy and cheap mass citizen surveillance,
Wanting billion dollar global corporations to give up the power of harvesting every nuance of our personal lives for marketing dollars,
Wanting people to take back rational thought and fund institutions with editors, fact checkers and individuals actually held accountable instead of the instant gratification of being "liked",
Wanting acronym agencies to forgo th
Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Under the principles laid out in the document, which Berners-Lee calls a "Magna Carta for the web", governments must ensure that its citizens have access to all of the internet, all of the time, and that their privacy is respected so they can be online "freely, safely and without fear."
Does that include people who get "de-platformed"?
Yes, I know that wasn't done by government ...but hmm, lookie here [contractfortheweb.org]:
Companies will
Make the internet affordable and accessible to everyone
So that no one is excluded from using and shaping the web.
But it seems that the de-platformed are excluded from "shaping" it ...
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BTW, I tried to link to a section of the "contract", but not only are there no anchors, the HTML is just plain an abomination. This is from TBL?
Oh ... it's Squarespace.
I find something oddly punderful about this, but I can't put it into words.
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Everyone (at least in) has seen street preachers with megaphones screaming about about Jebus and how we're going to hell if we don't repent.
Now imagine if he decided to get to every store in the mall and pull that act in the mall. After getting kicked out the fifth store, you could argue that he's being "deplatformed", when really, no one wants to hear him. Unlike the mall, people online can create new accounts pretty easily so no one is truly deplatformed unless they don't want to comply with the standards
The right to offend is the right to free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
> "and without fear"
Is impossible because people are afraid of stupid shit. Specifically they are afraid of other's speech.
> prejudice, bias, polarisation, fake news,
Being able to express any/all of those is a freedom. Specifically the Freedom of Speech. Trying to disallow those is oppression and censorship. Freedom of Speech only exists if you are free to be rude, hateful, offensive, lie, spread misinformation, and express unpopular opinions. There are, of course, limits already covered by laws. Slander, inciting violence, fraud and many others. But, fundamentally, if you lack the right to offend you lack the right to free speech.
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It's only "censorship" when the government does it, under the Constitution, dumbass.
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Incorrect. Anyone can censor. You're confusing the First Amendment with the overall concept of free speech.
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Free speech and democracy were created at places like Pnyx. [wikipedia.org] Can you imagine a hoard of Persian trolls trying to anonymously derail a discussion or a vote by disguising their voice and wearing a bag over their head?
Disagreements, arguments, even fist fights, and the tossing of rotten fruit and half eaten lunches should not only be expected, but encouraged. But that's not what we have.
What the internet has devolved into is truly dystopian.
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almost as important should be the right to anonymity. Take that away (for whatever purpose) and a chilling effect on free speech and expression will occur.
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When people say things like "without fear" they generally mean what a reasonable person would consider fear inducing.
That's actually less demanding than the law, which in the UK where Tim is from does actually require you to consider the other person's mental state to some degree, e.g. telling a suicidal person to kill themselves can get you in serious trouble.
Squarespace, seriously? (Score:1)
Squarespace, seriously?
The father of freaking HTML is using a cheesy hosted "website builder" to put up a document that is every bit as as stark and simple as any he did almost 30 years ago?
It probably took longer to clicky clicky everything than it would have to mark it up by hand.
The political stuff aside, we're doomed just from a nerd standpoint ...
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Squarespace, seriously?
The father of freaking HTML is using a cheesy hosted "website builder" to put up a document that is every bit as as stark and simple as any he did almost 30 years ago?
It probably took longer to clicky clicky everything than it would have to mark it up by hand.
The political stuff aside, we're doomed just from a nerd standpoint ...
And just to be clear, I have no problem with CMSs and visual editors per se, but in this case the HTML produced is a hot mess, and it is less functional than an ancient hand marked up HTML document (for example, they didn't bother to put any anchors in it so you could link to a section).
Definitions (Score:3)
relevance (Score:1)
so much for graceful degredation (Score:2)
Turn off JavaScript and then visit http://fortheweb.webfoundation... [webfoundation.org]
I am oddly moved by the giant silhouettes of not really identifiable things.
well-intentioned, yet- (Score:2)
I see that Mr Berners-Lee has made his decision. Now, let us see him enforce it.
(Also, the Magna Carta was backed by a clique of well-armed and extremely angry Barons and their personal armies, and was later annulled by the Pope.)
Communication Is Key (Score:2)
Praiseworthy but probably irrelevant (Score:2)
Good luck with that (Score:3)
2014 called... they want their article back (Score:2)
https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_... [ted.com]
So this was a talk he gave in 2014. Up to the minute news here on Slashdot now eh?
Unrealistic expectations (Score:3)
"For many years there was a feeling that the wonderful things on the web were going to dominate and we'd have a world with less conflict, more understanding, more and better science, and good democracy,"
Maybe that was just a dumb idea that came from a place of utter ignorance, like when you're a little kid and believe in Santa and the Easter Bunny?
Simply having that idea doesn't mean it was ever likely to happen.
But who will save the web from TBL (Score:2)
and his codification of digital rights management into web standards?
Bloat (Score:2)
Can we save it from bloated web sites that demand to load all sorts of scripts, fonts, and other (mostly) useless stuff?
Online threats (Score:2)
abuse and discrimination, political manipulation, and other threats that plague the online world
Because fortunately, none of this exists outside of Internet!
TBL (Score:2)
Is a hypocrite,
In one breath, he says people should have free access to all information on the Internet yet in the next breath he says fake news is a problem.
If he meant what he said per a free flow of information he would understand that having someone, anyone, "defining fake news" is the opposite of freedom.
I'm more than perfectly capable of determining what is real and what is fake. I don't want TBL defining it for me.
Re:What does ze mean exactly? (Score:4, Insightful)