The internet today isn’t what Tim Berners-Lee pictured when he invented the World Wide Web nearly three decades ago.
Berners-Lee says the web is “at a tipping point” as it faces threats like market concentration, data breaches, user frustration with ads and privacy, hate speech and so-called “fake news.”
“If you’d asked me 10 years ago, I would have said humanity is going to do a good job with this,” he said. “If we connect all these people together, they are such wonderful people they will get along. I was wrong.”
Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web Foundation has unveiled a “Contract for the Web” outlining principles to protect the internet as a basic right for everyone. One key pillar of this initiative is that companies respect consumers’ privacy and personal data.
About 1.5 billion people currently live in a country with no law on personal data protection. The contract requires governments to treat privacy as a fundamental human right.
tipping point [noun]—the point at which a series of small changes or incidents becomes significant enough to cause a larger, more important change.