World Wide Web Inventor Says Big Tech Must Be Regulated
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, called for large technology companies to be regulated to prevent the web from being “weaponized at scale.”
The net neutrality advocate said that social media companies have “been built to maximize profit more than to maximize social good. A legal or regulatory framework that accounts for social objectives may help ease those tensions.”
Writing on the 29th anniversary of his invention, Berners-Lee warned of power being concentrated with a small number of companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter. “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.”
In the open letter, published on the World Wide Web Foundation website, Berners-Lee also said it was a “myth that advertising is the only possible business model for online companies.” This statement comes after he called for tighter regulation of online political advertising last year, which he said was being used in “unethical ways.”
Berners-Lee’s letter also warned of the risks of a digital divide and inequality unless more work was done to connect the disadvantaged to the Internet. “If we do not invest seriously in closing this gap, the last billion will not be connected until 2042. That’s an entire generation left behind.”
In 2016, the UN passed a non-binding resolution that disruption of Internet access is a human rights violation. And at the beginning of this year, the UN Broadband Commission announced that it would be adopting the Alliance for Affordable Internet’s threshold for affordability target, which says entry-level broadband services should be less than 2 percent of average monthly incomes by the year 2025.
Berners-Lee said that universal Internet access is still a long way off, with only 19 of the 51 countries analyzed in the alliance’s 2017 Affordability Report having achieved this goal.
