The Dysfunctional Web

He cites three main sources of dysfunction.

First, deliberate and malicious behavior like state sponsored hacking and online harassment. Obviously true.

Second, he cites perverse incentives from the ad-based revenue models that reward “clickbait and the viral spread of misinformation”. That misses the mark. Rather, it is the privacy destroying revenue models that suck up users’ private identity information to sell it to the highest bidder.

Third, he cites “unintended negative consequences” of the web’s design, like polarizing discussions taking place online. That’s very wide of the mark. The web is the perfect place for difficult, even polarizing, disputes to be aired and explored. Where else? There is no other suitable forum. Berners-Lee appears to think that society would be better off if these differences were kept submerged rather than aired and resolved.

As uncomfortable as intense dispute may be to witness, there is no other way, short of violence, to resolve the existential conflict of the two irreconcilable philosophies vying for our nation’s future — Classical Liberalism or Marxist Progressivism. The alternative is to employ the way we resolved the irreconcilable dispute between slavery and abolition.

Any thinking person will immediately recognize there the most dangerous dysfunction this last development introduces to the Web, a dysfunction that Berners-Lee seems unaware of.

National governments and super-governments and top executives in Big Tech deciding which speech constitutes “hate speech” and scrubbing the Web clean of those offending ideas. Can anyone imagine a more effective way to marginalize and eliminate all political expression that opposes the official political agendas of the elites in power? Stalin could only dream of such power.

The anecdotes pile up that ordinary ideas from thinkers on the Right are removed, their accounts suspended, while obviously offensive comments, filled with violent imagery, remain in place if they conform with the agenda of the Left.

Big Tech, owned and directed by multi-billionaire elites personally devoted to the philosophies of the Left, run their algorithms to favor the content of the Left and disfavor the Right. They are the gatekeepers of content on the Web, and unfavorable content is burdened to the point that it barely leaks out.

The most insidious thing is that the elites scrubbing the Web of content they personally disfavor imagine they are acting for the greater good of the country. They are wrong.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.” C. S. Lewis.

“Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority.” Noah Webster

Berners-Lee is correct; the Web is becoming dysfunctional. But he is wrong about what the nature of that dysfunction is.

Related posts:

Increased focus and function. Better sleep. Brighter mood. Quicker learning. Deeper creativity and a sharper memory. These aren’t the effects of a wonder drug. They’re the natural results of a week…

Smoking is a very destructive habit — that’s no secret. Millions of people die from smoking-related diseases each year around the world. Yet, despite knowing the dangers of smoking, many people are…