Are dangerous internet trends threatening democracy?

The man who invented the internet thinks so.

The internet recently celebrated its 28^th birthday, but instead of celebrating, Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, voiced apprehension and concern. He outlines several major issues that could threaten democracy, and are preventing his creation from fulfilling its “true potential as a tool which serves all of humanity.”

Topping the list is the loss of control over our personal data, the spread of misinformation, and lack of transparency in political advertising.

More and more we are getting our news from social media sites and search engines. These sites constantly collect our personal data and us it to create the algorithms that decide what to show us. This is problematic for several reasons says Berners-Lee:

“The net result is that these sites show us content they think we’ll click on – meaning that misinformation, or ‘fake news’, which is surprising, shocking, or designed to appeal to our biases can spread like wildfire…and those with bad intentions can game the system to spread misinformation for financial or political gain.”

In addition to the spread of misinformation, this business model means we no longer have control over our personal data, “we often do not have any way of feeding back to companies what data we’d rather not share – especially with third parties”.

While Berners-Lee cites these as issues we must acknowledge and address, his biggest concern is how the government is abusing this information, infringing on our rights and threatening democracy.

“Through collaboration with – or coercion of – companies, governments are also increasingly watching our every move online, and passing extreme laws that trample on our rights to privacy…It creates a chilling effect on free speech and stops the web from being used as a space to explore important topics, like sensitive health issues, sexuality or religion.”

Lastly, he explains why we should be worried about unethical practices in political advertising

“Targeted advertising allows a campaign to say completely different, possibly conflicting things to different groups. Is that democratic?”

While there are no simple solutions to these complex problems, Tim Berners-Lee has a few suggestions:

“We need more algorithmic transparency to understand how important decisions that affect our lives are being made, and perhaps a set of common principles to be followed, regulation of political campaigning.”

 Society needs to encourage media literacy; spread the word, promote awareness and create a dialogue. We need to keep putting pressure on companies and governments. We can also take action by joining or donating to any of the organisations which are working on these issues around the world.

Retrived from http://webfoundation.org/2017/03/web-turns-28-letter/