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Tim Berners-Lee says tech giants may have to be split up

reuters.com

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Re: Tim Berners-Lee says tech giants may have to be split up

#341

Post by krupan »

I know I'm really late to this discussion, but what we really need[1] is the kind of control over our feeds (whether facebook, twitter, insta) that we have over our email inboxes. With email you can set up filters and labels and redirect your mail where ever you want. Or you can just hit the big SPAM button on stuff you never want to see. Why doesn't social media offer this? Especially with twitter, I'd love to follow some people for their tech tweets, as long as I could filter out their trump tweets. It should be super easy to do that, yet none of the social media platforms offer it. Have we been asking for it?

1. I'm not for regulation, but for us customers (yeah, yeah, we are the "product" not the customer, whatever) to demand this

Re: Tim Berners-Lee says tech giants may have to be split up

#343

Post by amanaplanacanal »

bepotts wrote: post #42
choko wrote: post #16

"But social media, Berners-Lee said, was still being used to propagate hate." This is one of the side effects of an open web, and one I feel we should live with in the interests of freedom. The only alternative of which I am aware is to police speech through some kind of authority. I'm not sure that there is an authority in existence that I would trust with that level of power. In a perfect world, we would be able to…

Complaining about an open web is just a proxy for complaining about establishment ideas being challenged. You see in Britain with the complaints against the Leave Campaign; you see it in the United States with the rise of Trump; you see it in the European Union with the complaints against far-right candidates. The governing elites don't like it when you challenge their assumptions, and instead of making an argument a…

People seem to be downvoting you without replying, which doesn't seem very helpful.

I'm sure there are some people who fit your first paragraph, but I don't think that's the major issue.

The ideal of free speech is that people can honestly disagree, and state their positions, a discuss the issues. Then the best ideas will win out. But our current social media environment does the exact opposite.

It appears that the way social media now works is that it drives people farther apart. The Red team is moving farther to the right, the Blue team is moving farther to the left, and very little real discussion of issues is happening between them. Much of the cause of that seems to be built into the way our social media is designed.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee says tech giants may have to be split up

#344

Post by OrderlyTiamat »

sumeno wrote: post #223
OrderlyTiamat wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people don't use facebook. I thinks WhatsApp is a better example, it's even more ubiquitous, though I'm sure there are still people who don't use it. Heck, I'm personally thinking of stopping, it's just that everyone is there. Two of my recent orders were negotiated by WhatsApp. It's used almost universally.

WhatsApp isn't even close to as ubiquitous as Facebook. WhatsApp has about 1.5 billion monthly active users compared to Facebook's 2.1 billion. https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly... https://www.statista.com/statistics/260819/number-of-monthly...

Interesting, Doesn't match my experience. I'm wondering what the age distributions are on those. Thanks for correcting me!

Re: Tim Berners-Lee says tech giants may have to be split up

#345

Post by _cs2017_ »

rusk wrote: post #238
_cs2017_ wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would network effect not be important? Even without the advertising model, your profits would still depend on user count, no?

No, that's not the network effect I'm thinking of. To wit: The value intrinsic in the relationships between your users ("The Network") - to the point that you want all users whether paying or not.

That would be just as important for a subscription based service. If your friends use the service, you're much more likely to continue using it and keep paying the monthly fee.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee says tech giants may have to be split up

#346

Post by travmatt »

_dczq wrote: post #334
TangoTrotFox wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody says this before elections. Trump was going to 'drain the swamp' and Obama was going to take down k-street influence. Then they get into office, tip their hat, and turn their back until the next election when suddenly they're incredible again, or at least they promise they will be. Obama ended up creating a special executive chair to let a Monsanto VP take control of the FDA, tried to jam the corporate writ…

Does cynicism help solve the problem? There are also bunch of promises that Obama kept (and Trump). Focusing on some that he didn’t keep doesn’t change that. https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/

It’s much more fashionable and edgy to point at any failure and then judge their entire administration on solely that point. Don’t forget to dramatically overestimate the presidents ability to effect change in the government as a whole, and instead hold them accountable for congressional obstruction.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee says tech giants may have to be split up

#347

Post by zbentley »

nine_k wrote: post #227
kerng wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walking away sounds easy on paper, like for gaming addicts. The articles about Facebook from the past come to mind where management was fully aware of the addiction factor, and in fact did everything to encourage people to stay on Facebook longer, including showing them "relevant" content and encouraging likes. Maybe restrictions, similar to gambling could be put into effect? For instance, clearly stating the busines…

If such addiction is something that can be diagnosed via a reasonably rigorous procedure, then yes, we'll probably have to do something similar to other addictive things: age limits, clear warnings, maybe even independent ongoing testing of the effects. Compare to selling alcohol. Most social sites already impose age limitations.

> Compare to selling alcohol.

Is the potential risk of addiction related to why alcohol sale is regulated? Most rationales I've seen for preventing sale to minors relate to health effects and immediate intoxication effects (car crashes etc.) instead.

Don't get me wrong, I'd be thrilled if addictive potential was considered primary among reasons to consider regulating something. I'm just not sure it is.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee says tech giants may have to be split up

#348

Post by int_19h »

Ibethewalrus wrote: post #315
dkonofalski wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just had this same conversation with a colleague. The old internet was really the civilized wild west. All the idealogical virtue of sharing and learning was plentiful and you had to have some basic technical skill to contribute or be involved enough to learn how to do it. Now, any curmudgeon can post whatever brain farts pop out with a frequency that only rivals that of their actual mouths.

Exactly this. Before you could ignore the lone racist person in the neighborhood. Now, they can go online, create a forum and gather together... so much for the promise of connecting the world...

When was that "before", though?

Stormfront was probably the best-known forum like that before Gab. And it has been around since early 90s, first as a BBS, then as an actual web site.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee says tech giants may have to be split up

#349

Post by zbentley »

rusk wrote: post #139
RickS wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's so much right with your take here, IMO. It flies in the face of so much opposition from reality – much of it credible – like how the hell do you make money when you eschew walled gardens, engagement boosters, and adtech friendly practices? Do people even want to make the tradeoffs they'd have to? Is regulation too heavyhanded? Will it be that for as long as these systems can be turned into money machines, old…

I can't help but feel that the Internet is hamstrung by overreliance on advertising as a revenue model ... All of the opposing forces you describe simply evaporate if you charge a fee for access to the API. Something small and unobtrusive but which would at twitter scale add up to an awful lot of moolah. Because you're not trying to monetise your users beyond that it doesn't really matter if loads of people stop usin…

> Something small and unobtrusive but which would at twitter scale add up to an awful lot of moolah.

That only works if there is something else preventing competitors from monetizing end-user attention instead. That's possible, but (I don't think) probable.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee says tech giants may have to be split up

#350

Post by craftyguy »

contravariant wrote: post #11
zackkatz wrote: post #2

I suggest the title be changed to remove “Father of Web”. “Tim Berners-Lee says…” is better.

Make that "Sir Tim Berners-Lee" and I agree.

"Tim 'supporter of DRM and now mostly trying to just stay relevant' Berners-Lee"
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