Since one of the creators of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee presented his first solution for it, 28 years have passed. Then he imagined the network as an open platform that would allow everyone everywhere to exchange information, gain access to opportunities and destroy cultural and geographical boundaries.

In many ways, the Network has lived up to this vision, although there is a constant struggle to keep it open. The events of the past year and the consequences that they entailed, made Tim Berners-Lee worry. He encourages users to jointly solve these problems so that the Network can realize its true potential as a tool that serves all of humanity.

Users lost control of personal data

The current business model of many websites offers free content in exchange for personal data. Many agree with this - although often without looking, accepting long and confusing documents with conditions, in principle, without objecting to any information being collected in exchange for free services.

Since data is subsequently stored in proprietary storage, we do not take into account the possibilities that we could realize if we could directly control the information and choose when and with whom to share it. Moreover, we often cannot select data that we would not like to share with companies.

Ubiquitous company access to user data has other implications. Through collaboration or coercion by companies, governments are increasingly monitoring every step of users on the Internet, and enacting laws that violate privacy rights.

Using repressive regimes as an example, one can easily assess the harm done: bloggers can be arrested and killed, and political opponents controlled. But even in those countries where, as many believe, governments place the interests of citizens above all else, they continue to monitor citizens. This frighteningly affects free speech and prevents the use of the Internet as a space for studying important topics such as health problems, sexuality or religion.

Easy spread of misinformation on the web

Today, most people find news and information on the Internet through several social networks and search engines. These sites make more money when we click on the links that show us. They also choose what to show us based on the information extracted from our data. The end result is that these sites show us fake news that surprise, shock, or indulge our preconceptions, and spread like wildfire. Using the science of data and the army of bots, those who have not the most honest intentions can use this system to spread misinformation in order to obtain financial or political benefits.

Online Political Advertising Requires Transparency and Understanding

The fact that most people receive information from several platforms, and the increasingly advanced use of algorithms based on rich pools of personal data, means that during political campaigns, separate advertising content is now created that focuses directly on users.

One of Berners-Lee’s sources suggests that in the US elections in 2016, up to 50 thousand advertising elements were published on Facebook every day, which made their monitoring almost impossible. There is speculation that some of the political advertising in the United States and around the world is used in an unethical way, for example, to point voters to fake news sites or to keep others from voting. Targeted advertising allows you to say completely different, conflicting things during a campaign.

These are complex problems, and their solutions will also not be simple. But there are already several general directions to progress. Berners-Lee encourages working with web companies to achieve a balance that puts a fair level of data control back in the hands of users, including developing new technologies, such as personal data packages, if necessary, and exploring alternative revenue models such as subscriptions and micropayments.

He believes that users should combat the over-distribution of oversight laws by the government, including through the courts. The online community should abandon misinformation by encouraging gatekeepers such as Google and Facebook to continue their efforts to combat this problem, while avoiding the creation of any central authority to decide what is true and what is not .

We need more algorithmic transparency to understand how to make important decisions that affect our lives, and possibly the general principles that need to be followed. Now there is an urgent need to close the “blind spot on the Internet” in regulating political campaigns.

The Berners-Lee Web Foundation team will work on many of these issues as part of a new five-year strategy: explore issues in more detail, and develop proactive policy decisions. They also compiled a catalog of other copyright organizations around the world so that users could explore and consider support.

All blogs, posts, tweets, photos, videos, apps, web pages, and more are the contributions of millions of people around the world creating an online community. Everything: from politicians fighting for the openness of the Internet, organizations and standards that increase the power, accessibility and security of technologies and people who protested on the streets. Society has taken the responsibility of creating the network that we have now, and now the creation of the network we want also depends on us all, writes Berners-Lee.