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I invented the web. Here are three things we need to change to save it

theguardian.com

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Re: I invented the web. Here are three things we need to change to save it

#121

Post by k__ »

halflings wrote: post #115
ThePhysicist wrote: post #80

Surprised that no one mentioned the new EU data protection directive, which goes a long way to fix the first issue mentioned in the article, the loss of control over our personal data (only for users in Europe though). I studied it in detail as I work in data analysis and consult companies on this, and I honestly think it is one of the best laws produced by the EU so far: It gives users a multitude of rights such as…

Woah, didn't know it went this far. If anything, this would be great for facebook (which has been anything but transparent when it comes to what they do with your data when your account is deleted). Google already has some relatively transparent controls on what data they have on you, and allow you to wipe all or parts of it.

But the law only works with companies.

The Internet as whole never forgets

Re: I invented the web. Here are three things we need to change to save it

#122

Post by return0 »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #80

Surprised that no one mentioned the new EU data protection directive, which goes a long way to fix the first issue mentioned in the article, the loss of control over our personal data (only for users in Europe though). I studied it in detail as I work in data analysis and consult companies on this, and I honestly think it is one of the best laws produced by the EU so far: It gives users a multitude of rights such as…

OTOH, it allows public authorities to bypass these regulations for "criminal purposes" and does not define any absolute safe haven rights from that.

Re: I invented the web. Here are three things we need to change to save it

#124

Post by username223 »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #60
username223 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of internet users view "beautiful" webpages as a display of trustworthiness and importance. Not so much. A lot of web users like simple, predictable pages. Flyout menus spazzing all over the page, giant headers breaking the space bar, and obscure hamburgers hiding useful features just confuse and annoy people who don't know about CSS element blocking.

Those aren't beautiful pages. We geeks, who can understand the code, decry the complexity of a beautiful page and prefer not to go there. But we're 1% of the audience. The other 99% are used to equating beauty and style with quality. More style == more quality. Less style == less quality. The pages we love because of their simplicity don't do well in the mass market because of their simplicity. I have taken to callin…

Maybe I misunderstand what you mean by beauty.

> The other 99% are used to equating beauty and style with quality. More style == more quality. Less style == less quality.

I dunno. Try sitting down with an older relative and watching them try to use a heavily-styled page. There's a decent chance they won't think to click the hamburger. They may accidentally mouse over a flyover and get confused/annoyed when an unwanted menu covers the screen. Or they may try to use the flyover and fail when it retracts because they moved the pointer off the menu for a moment on the way to a nested submenu.

I admit the floating nav-bar breaking page down is a personal pet peeve, though. Seriously, folks. When I page down, I expect the text at the bottom of the screen to appear at a specific place near the top of the screen, and my eyes subconsciously jump there to continue reading. Instead, your nav-bar covers up some unread text, or changes size because "reasons," or you hooked page down and got the scroll distance wrong. You probably won't get it right, so please don't do it. If I want to "nav", I can go back to the top of the page. Or you can put the "nav" on the left, since vertical space is precious, and narrower text is easier to read.

Re: I invented the web. Here are three things we need to change to save it

#125

Post by Silhouette »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #80

Surprised that no one mentioned the new EU data protection directive, which goes a long way to fix the first issue mentioned in the article, the loss of control over our personal data (only for users in Europe though). I studied it in detail as I work in data analysis and consult companies on this, and I honestly think it is one of the best laws produced by the EU so far: It gives users a multitude of rights such as…

You also have the right to demand the deletion of your personal data and to revoke the right of a company to process it, as well as to demand correction of inaccurate data.

This is probably the biggest change. Previously, at least in Europe, the emphasis has typically been on allowing people to know what data was being collected and to require correction of inaccuracies, but much less on whether it was actually allowed to be collected in the first place or allowing data subjects to require deletion of data.

I'm a little worried about whether the practical implications of this have been properly considered, which is something the EU has historically been quite bad at doing when it comes to technology and business laws. For example, under (65) in the regulation[1], which is primarily about rights to have personal data deleted and the "right to be forgotten", I see few provisions for a business keeping personal data that it legitimately collected with the subject's consent even if the cost of deleting it is prohibitive. An obvious example would be data that also exists in backups taken during the period of storing and processing that data, all of which would need to be updated in non-trivial ways to remove the data from them.

[1] http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:O...

Re: I invented the web. Here are three things we need to change to save it

#127

Post by narrowrail »

clydethefrog wrote: post #96
sweeneyrod wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"selfishness, superficiality and female independence" One of these things is not like the others.

I hope this is a case of forgetting the Oxford comma.

I think we can be charitable here; I'm 99% sure most of us would agree with the intent of the OP.

Re: I invented the web. Here are three things we need to change to save it

#128

Post by epigramx »

K0nserv wrote: post #88

> Today marks 28 years since I submitted my original proposal for the worldwide web. I imagined the web as an open platform that would allow everyone, everywhere to share information , access opportunities, and collaborate across geographic and cultural boundaries. Seems to me that the above and the points raised in point 2 sit on opposite sides of the spectrum. Either you get a free and open internet where everyone…

> democratic nature of the internet

Democracy assumes 1 person has 1 vote. This is not the case here necessarily.

Re: I invented the web. Here are three things we need to change to save it

#129

Post by ethbro »

k__ wrote: post #121
halflings wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woah, didn't know it went this far. If anything, this would be great for facebook (which has been anything but transparent when it comes to what they do with your data when your account is deleted). Google already has some relatively transparent controls on what data they have on you, and allow you to wipe all or parts of it.

But the law only works with companies. The Internet as whole never forgets

The Internet also has to make money at some point, which means there's usually a corporate entity in the chain, one whose money (for better or worse) eventually touches Western banks.

So yes, the Internet never forgets (things it can make a buck off of).

Re: I invented the web. Here are three things we need to change to save it

#130

Post by gkya »

notahacker wrote: post #77
gkya wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really hate professional journalism, I hate news. I only read them because I have to. This aside, the actual, relevant problem is not what is en vogue to hate or not, but that the trustible institutions take the easy route and instead of producing nice subscription models and actual, valuable content with good, concise, precise wording and without clickbait posts; they just push sub-par stuff and ads to feed…

I think a world in which all the trustworthy institutions hide all their content behind paywalls and so most people rely entirely on clickbait stuff from sources that don't have reputations to live up to is even worse...

So many "all"s used for a single sentence. They can have a free headline+summary feed, or a paid daily digest, or paid columns+digest and rest gratis. Monetising content is more honest, more predictable and better for the users' privacy and their bandwidth than ads, and I'm telling that I'd buy if they'd supply. At the end of the day, collecting, verifying, editing and publishing news is not free for the news agencies, it's not produced for free and need not be free at all.
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