According to Business Insider, the creator of the internet is working to get big tech companies to adopt new principles regarding data privacy.
More specifically, Tim Berners-Lee has convinced Google and Facebook to “agree to new ethical principles around respecting people’s data and privacy.” He’s also advocating to break the companies up, Business Insider said.
Berners-Lee’s work around privacy comes as individuals and businesses alike struggle to keep their data protected. “We have problems with privacy, abuse of personal data, people can be profiled in a way that they can be manipulated by clever ads… [they can be] taken to sites where they can come across fake communities of fake people with fake ideas and fake truths,” Berners-Lee said at the Web Summit last week. “There are lots of issues with the web.”
Business Insider says that his proposed principles include:
- Making the web free and accessible to everyone
- Respecting people’s data and privacy
- Developing technologies “that support the best in humanity”
Thus far, Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web Foundation has “signed up” the French government, as well as UK prime minister, Gordon Brown.
The inventor of the internet also aims to decentralize the web one day, which would “naturally involve defanging the likes of Facebook and Google, which exert a ton of influence over the internet.”
Berners-Lee said that he feels positive results are possible taking these steps, but that it will take some time to see those results. At this point, getting big tech companies to adopt more ethical privacy standards is only the first step into creating a safer and freer internet, and a better experience for users.
“The process we have at the second stage is to turn these principles into more concrete commitments… the third stage of the process would be an accountability mechanism,” Berners-Lee said, according to Business Insider. “I accept you can only judge this some months down the line.”
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