(25 Nov 2019) FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: apus127238 World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee released an ambitious rule book for online governance — a bill of rights and obligations for the internet — designed to counteract the growing prevalence of such anti-democratic poisons as misinformation, mass surveillance and censorship.
The product of a year's work by the World Wide Web Foundation where Berners-Lee is a founding director, the " Contract for the Web " seeks commitments from governments and industry to make and keep knowledge freely available — a digital policy agenda true to the design vision of the 30-year-old web.
The contract is non-binding, however. And funders and partners in the endeavor include Google and Facebook, whose data-collecting business models and sensation-rewarding algorithms have been blamed for exacerbating online toxicity.
For instance, the contract proposes a framework for protecting online privacy and personal data with clearly defined national laws that give individuals greater control over the data collected about them. Independent, well-resourced regulators would offer the public effective means for redress. Current laws and institutions don't measure up to that standard.
Amnesty International just released a report charging that Google and Facebook's business models are predicated on the abuse of human rights.
Berners-Lee nevertheless says that "having them in the room is really important." He said both companies had approached the foundation seeking participation.
The nonprofit foundation's top donors include the Swedish, Canadian and U.S. governments and the Ford and Omidyar foundations.
One of its biggest challenges is the growing balkanization of the internet, with national governments led by China, Russia and Iran exerting increasing technical control over their domestic networks, tightening censorship and surveillance.
So how to prevent governments from restricting internet access at their borders?
One approach, said Berners-Lee, could be financial pressure. Multinational lenders could condition lower interest rates, for example, on a nation's willingness to let information flow freely on its domestic network.
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