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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

#241

Post by ThePhysicist »

Silhouette wrote: post #219
ThePhysicist wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it surely creates some work for companies, but on the other hand what good would it be if you could just keep personal data around just because it happens to be on a backup tape? Companies simply have to implement suitable backup schedules, which will ensure that the data gets deleted within an acceptable time period (e.g. two weeks), which is doable without actively erasing any specific data (instead of simply e…

You and I have very different definitions of the word "simply". Arranging proper backups at all is not something to take for granted when you're dealing with small businesses that have many other things to do, but obviously they're important for safeguarding the provision of products and services to all customers and it's important that any backups that are made are handled with proper regard to both security and int…

Companies need to separate personal data from other data as early as possible. Yes, this requires some work and rethinking of data structures, it is doable though. Why would it be impossible to do this in your opinion? Do you have a more concrete example that we can discuss?

In General, I think requiring that companies do not hold on to your personal data indefinitely is a pretty reasonable regulation. If there were exceptions e.g. for backup data it would provide a convenient loophole for companies to keep the data.

Also, if companies keep copies of their personal data lying around it increases the risk of the data being stolen or leaked into the public. We have seen that even for the largest companies it's impossible to avoid "losing" data once in a while, so making sure that this data contains the least amount of sensitive information possible is very reasonable. The regulation does not even assume that companies are malicious, it just assumes that sh*t happens and tries to mitigate potential damage to individuals.

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

#242

Post by ThePhysicist »

3pt14159 wrote: post #212
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…

If my business runs servers out of Canada that Europeans use, what are the enforcement mechanisms for this law?

It's not important where your servers are or if you are a European company, what matters is that you offer services to people in the EU (market place principle). I am not fully clear on how this will apply to foreign companies that do not advertise/target EU users though.

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

#243

Post by chopin »

scholia wrote: post #228
Silhouette wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your concerns are entirely fair, but this also isn't a new issue. Tabloid journalism has been a problem for as long as there have been tabloids. That phenomenon is well known to be highly influential around election times among the part of the population who read those tabloids, even though often that same part of the population will be hurt the most by the measures they are supporting but don't fully understand.

It seems to me that one crucial factor is what you might call "the destruction of the gatekeepers". In politics, you had systematic lying that was intended to deceive people, and lies led directly to Brexit in the UK and Trump's election in the USA. There's a reasonably good account in "Donald Trump breaks the conservative media" http://uk.businessinsider.com/conservative-media-trump-drudg... In the health field, we'…

>their honest fact-checked newspapers

Of which newspapers you are talking? I don't think such a thing exists.

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

#244

Post by keypress »

fiatjaf wrote: post #137
keypress wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feature wise, I always think there isn't much between the big brand browsers without extensions. They could do so much more. They may be better at CSS, JS and have some good debug tools in them these days, but as actual web browsing tools, there's plenty of ground to cover. Bookmarking, History, Link management and even Meta inspections/overviews could be much more user friendly and useful. Example: Chrome is a tabbe…

From your example what I could understand is that browsers are not doing what you prefer, so you call them "feature lacking". For the specific case of your example I prefer the current browser behavior. So what?

Perhaps it wasn't the best example, as the Tab/Window title could fall under Window management. But fine, if you just want minimal chrome, perhaps Chrome will do. Parent said feature-rich. My point really is that there are technical and usability features. And while of course there is cross over - I don't see much in the way of advancement in usability (without extensions). Browser's haven't changed that much in the last ten years - from an end users perspective. Window and web page management isn't great.

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

#245

Post by unicornporn »

h2hn wrote: post #156
unicornporn wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Browsing with NoScript is fine if you just visit the same websites over and over. If you actually like to _surf_ the web, the experience is reduced to a never ending configuration nightmare. At least that's my experience. Nice in theory, but a terrible UX.

Seriously, I'm been using it for more than 5 years and I've only enabled it for local sites and everything is working. It depends on what sites you browse. I don't do any social, use google or any other crap, so it's enabled to 0 internet sites with no problem. If I need to activate it I have a shortkey (vimperator) that opens a new firefox profile (private and prepared to load crap) for the current site so I don't l…

If I'd use something that required configuration, I think I'd use https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix. I did use it for quite awhile, but ended up ditching it. Now I'm on uBlock Origin, HTTPS Everywhere and Self-Destructing Cookies. Although I might lose some control, it just works.

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

#246

Post by sauronlord »

tim333 wrote: post #232
sauronlord wrote: post #225

He is advocating for censorship. Misinformation spreads everywhere not just the web. Who decides what is "misinformation"? All speech and information is political, because man is a political creature. Who decides what is "political"? His first point about losing control of our personal data is right on though. Even so called "heroes of the web/freedom" are on the "fake news bandwagon". What the hell have we come to w…

He doesn't actually say censorship. He says "by encouraging gatekeepers such as Google and Facebook to continue their efforts to combat the problem." Just putting fake stories at 50th place in the search results say rather than #1 is not censorship.

Who decides what is fake?

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

#247

Post by Drumlin »

fiatjaf wrote: post #138
Drumlin wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called technical 'progress' - as technology progresses, you need bigger and more specialised teams of technicians. It reaches a point where huge entities like governments and corporates are the only groups with enough resources to compete. It happens everywhere... a constant drive to improve by building on top of layers and layers of abstraction - to the point where even the experts give up and view it as, well,…

I don't see any other example. I see technologies being replaced by something totally new from time to time. What would be an example of this?

The most obvious example in the real world is those huge scientific projects like Cern's LHC, which requires the co-operation of multiple governments - no individual or team could attempt that. It's no surprise that the web came from there, since to create that at the time required a certain technical expertise.

If you want more software examples, how about operating systems? The good thing about software is there's a low barrier to entry, so you can have open source projects. That said, those open source experts often know their trade due to working as technicians for business or government, or relying on support materials.

The further down the road technology progresses, the less accessible it is for individuals to create.

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

#248

Post by ethics_gradient »

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…

I believe there are two critical components of that that aren't simply natural result of the democratic nature of the internet, nor are necessary.

First, WWW is relatively young, so people haven't learned how to use it well.

Second, large platforms have been created to shift the democratic nature of the internet - make pseudo-open spaces that are not truly open, like various social networks, and give the users content that is a) tailored to them, so leads to less openness, less improvement and more mindless consumption and b) does it in an obfuscated way, via closed algorithms that prioritize you staying on the website to improving your life.

Those might be somewhat naturally occurring, but the degree to which they occur doesn't have to stay the same.

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

#249

Post by Silhouette »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #241
Silhouette wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You and I have very different definitions of the word "simply". Arranging proper backups at all is not something to take for granted when you're dealing with small businesses that have many other things to do, but obviously they're important for safeguarding the provision of products and services to all customers and it's important that any backups that are made are handled with proper regard to both security and int…

Companies need to separate personal data from other data as early as possible. Yes, this requires some work and rethinking of data structures, it is doable though. Why would it be impossible to do this in your opinion? Do you have a more concrete example that we can discuss? In General, I think requiring that companies do not hold on to your personal data indefinitely is a pretty reasonable regulation. If there were…

Companies need to separate personal data from other data as early as possible. Yes, this requires some work and rethinking of data structures, it is doable though. Why would it be impossible to do this in your opinion?

I'm very wary of making that assumption, because so much data could potentially be personal data even if it's not obvious. Remember that the real criterion here is data that is or could be linked to an identified individual. With the kind of progress being made with data mining and analysis and the kind of processing power being devoted to those activities today, there are few safe assumptions any more about what becomes impersonal data just because it's been "aggregated" or "pseudonymised".

Let's consider a common example. Suppose a business operates a web site, and like most such businesses it keeps server logs. Those logs are useful for a wide variety of purposes and some of the data may remain useful for long periods, to allow analysis of things like how the site is being used or whether certain patterns are useful for detecting potential threats, or even to provide evidence that a customer did in fact use the services on the site during a certain period in the event of a dispute over charges.

In themselves, those logs probably don't inherently contain personal data. However, each record does have data such as IP addresses within it, which may be quite easy to link to a specific customer in practice and thus make everything in that record into personal data.

Now, suppose a customer who has been using that site for a while stops, and then files a notice to remove all personal data about them that the site operator isn't legally allowed to keep despite that notice. In order to comply with that request, must the site operator therefore delete all records based on the server logs, including any backups or derived data, to which that customer might be connected?

I can't immediately see why the site operator would be allowed to keep those records with a literal reading of the new rules. However, removing them would potentially undermine useful and reasonable business functions such as those mentioned above. Moreover, the cost of doing so might be substantial, and the adjustments required so the infrastructure used to process those logs can support this sort of retrospective editing might also be substantial.

In such a case, I think the balance would usually be too far towards the individual. The imposition on the site operator is great, both in the effort to comply with the request itself and in the damaging effects on reasonable business practices. The risk to the visitor of that potentially identifiable data being used for typical purposes in connection with server logs is low. Unless there are other relevant factors that point the other way (perhaps if the site deals with a particularly sensitive subject) the cost to the site operator is almost certainly disproportionate to the benefit to the individual.

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

#250

Post by keypress »

username223 wrote: post #119
keypress wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook got a foothold, because authoring tools sucked so bad. That's ignoring the magic of some of their social tooling. But sharing digital content with your own intended audience could be achieved in a distributed manner. I know the W3C are trying to tackle that problem. We still need intuitive and easy publishing and aggregation tools that beat the Facebooks.

> But sharing digital content with your own intended audience could be achieved in a distributed manner. We almost have the tools now: * cheap or free blog hosting with easy markup and non-public posts * self-hosted commenting with a URL field for commenters, enabling discoverability * friendly RSS readers (I use NetNewsWire) * password management built into most systems and/or browsers, to keep track of individual l…

It's the user friendly bit that matters.
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