Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, said the platform needs a rethink in order to combat spying and the spread of “nasty, mean ideas” or websites.
At the Innovate Finance global FinTech summit in London, Berners-Lee explained that he created the Web in order for the public to “do good stuff” and promote knowledge sharing, but instead it’s been used to proliferate negative ideas and compromise privacy, Reuters reported.
“We need to rethink the way we build society on top of these web pages,” Berners-Lee said while addressing the summit.
“How come nasty, mean ideas seem to have traveled more prevalently than constructive ideas on Twitter sometimes? Is that the way it has been designed? Could Twitter be tweaked?”
Twitter social media platform is often called into question when it comes to contentious behaviors acted out by users, especially in the case of people being abused online and the spread of negative tweets.
Berners-Lee’s conclusion was that a “complete change of strategy” is necessary. He also mentioned that both Facebook and Twitter were already rethinking their approaches.
“We have tried to keep it open, we kept it royalty-free. We have kept it open in the sense of no censorship. On a good day, in a good country, we keep it free of spying,” he said, adding that there is also a need to study the effects that these networks are having on society.
“We actually have to not leave people to make whatever social networks they like.”
We’re always on the lookout for opportunities to partner with innovators and disruptors.
Learn More