On the 30th anniversary of the World Wide Web, its founder Tim Berners-Lee has highlighted three sources of disfunction on the web: Deliberate, malicious intent, such as state-sponsored hacking and attacks, criminal behaviour, and online harassment. System design that creates perverse incentives where user value is sacrificed, such as ad-based revenue models that commercially reward clickbait and the viral spread of misinformation. Unintended negative consequences of benevolent design, such as the outraged and polarised tone and quality of online discourse. Lee says in a letter that we "can’t just blame one government, one social network or the human spirit. Simplistic narratives risk exhausting our energy as we chase the symptoms of these problems instead of focusing on their root causes. To get this right, we will need to come together as a global web community." He has called for the web to be recognised as a human right and built for public good, and for citizens, governments and companies to build a new Contract for the Web. In a conversation with Berners-Lee, I discussed issues that are rife in particular in India: of centralisation of the Internet with a few dominant players, misinformation and Internet Shutdowns, personal data being seen as a national resource and data localisation, platform neutrality, and end-to-end encryption: * On Centralisation of the Internet, the accessibility of web versus apps MediaNama: We've seen a large amount of centralisation of the Internet ever since the launch of the iPhone and the growth of app stores and apps.…
