The internet must be controlled to stop the contagion of malicious rumours, myths and hoaxes from spreading so widely over the web that they become regarded as facts.
A new organisation should label websites for their trustworthiness once they have been proved reliable sources, so internet users can ‘filter good information from bad.’
Such is the call from Sir Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the first website in 1991, who will launch an internet foundation early next year to do just that job.
He said his online kite mark-style system would not restrict freedom of speech, but would seek to advance the Web, which he wants to keep as ‘open, free and neutral.’
But he argued that too many online campaigns and “cults” have already swayed thousands of people into believing falsities, which could prove “deeply damaging.”
Evidencing his claim, Mr Berners-Lee said the Large Hadron Collider was said to cause the end of the world and that the MMR vaccine was said to give children autism.
One way he believed that could combat this spread of misinformation was to start branding websites, but his team has decided a more complicated system was required.
Disclosures of his pre-speech briefing on the World Wide Web Foundation, reported by the Mail and Telegraph, reveal he wants to tackle the internet’s ‘conspiracy theories of sorts.’
“I’m not a fan of giving a website a simple number like an IQ rating because like people they can vary in all kinds of different ways,” he said at Washington’s Newseum.
“So I’d be interested in different organisations labelling websites in different ways.”
The foundation will have another focus of making the Web more accessible in developing nations, where technology has helped meet people’s health, nutrition and education needs.
Alongside filtering fact from fiction, the foundation, whose members will include governments, businesses and NGOs, will also work to expand the Web’s "capabilities and robustness."
In line with the call for a cleaning up of the Web, Google has unveiled new guidelines to prohibit clips being uploaded on YouTube which “incite violence” or ‘encourage illegal activities’.
The government is playing its part too, by saying the law on suicide is to be clarified as part of a bid to curb “suicide websites,” which inform their users how other people succeeded in killing themselves.
Image: Photo by Scott Henrichsen
Sep 22, 2008
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