DUBAI 9 November 2018: In an interview with CNN’s Laurie Segall, Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee discussed the improvements that need to be made online.
He revealed a new campaign called “Contract for the Web” at the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon, Portugal. The campaign promotes principles for governments, companies and citizens to improve the internet and fight back against hate speech, privacy concerns and political manipulation.
More than 50 companies and organizations, including Facebook, Google and the French government have signed the contract, which will be published in full in May 2019.
On how companies are embracing his contract for the Web:
“People who are building in-home devices have talked to me about their excitement. We have a solid project which allows people to have their own data pods. People are realizing that if they give you control of your own data, they’re generating value for you. And a lot of companies are finding it so exciting to be able to switch from trying to exploit you, trying to make you buy something you didn’t want to buy, to actually switch back to the core business model of helping the user, generating value for the user.”
On how data is not as valuable to companies as one might expect:
“If you join a big social network and you give them all your data and you get stuff for free, how much actually is the value of that data to all those insurance companies. It turns out, one blog I saw said that the value to them of your data is less than you pay for internet connectivity anyway. So you could actually replace that funding stream by turning it around and paying for it yourself, it wouldn’t be much. So maybe it’s a myth.”
On his idea of user privacy and giving people control over their own data:
“Privacy is a human right. For me, it’s very important that I have control of my data. That doesn’t mean I’m going to just hoard it or that I won’t share it with a company which will help me buy the best birthday presents for my family. It means that I will be able to share it with the people I work with. It means I’ll have total control over who I share with. This idea is not just about me being my own silo, it’s actually having the joy of being able to share with whoever.”
