Skip to main content

Sir Tim Berners-Lee speaks out on the 28th anniversary of the World Wide Web

On March 12, the World Wide Web celebrated its 28th birthday — or, more accurately, the 28th anniversary of a proposal for the project that was submitted by its creator, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. To mark the occasion, Berners-Lee published a message outlining what he views as the three biggest challenges that the web faces today.

The first is the fact that we’ve lost control of our personal data. Today, many internet users exchange their personal information for access to various sites and services, agreeing to contracts tied to pages and pages of terms and conditions.

Recommended Videos

Berners-Lee argues that there are problems with the way our data is held by companies, out of our sight and out of our control. He ties this practice to governments carryout out surveillance on their citizens, and suggests that it has a negative impact on the internet’s capacity as a setting for free and open debate on important topics.

The second challenge relates to the ongoing spread of misinformation across the internet. Berners-Lee states that a majority of users only visit a handful of websites, so it’s easy for the people in control of those sites to produce content that’s attractive to a captive audience, and implement opinion-influencing bots to “game the system” even further.

The third challenge comes from political advertising on the internet, which Berners-Lee claims is in need of better public understanding and more transparency. He cites a source that suggests that as many as 50,000 variations of ads were served every day on Facebook during the 2016 United States presidential election, which he describes as a “near-impossible situation to monitor.”

He goes on to suggest that some political parties in the U.S. and further afield might be using the internet maliciously, pointing people toward fake news, and spreading different messages among different demographics.

Berners-Lee closes his message by saying that simple solutions won’t address these complex problems, encouraging internet users to work with “gatekeepers” like Google and Facebook, and his team at The Web Foundation, as they attempt to forge the next era of the World Wide Web.

Brad Jones
Brad is an English-born writer currently splitting his time between Edinburgh and Pennsylvania. You can find him on Twitter…
Upgrade to the Alienware 18 Area-51 gaming laptop with RTX 5070 Ti — $500 off!
The Alienware 18 Area-51 Gaming Laptop on a white background.

You should be ready to spend a lot if you want a powerful gaming laptop, but you should also be on the lookout for potential savings. Now's a great time to check out Alienware deals because of Dell's Black Friday in July sale, which includes a fantastic offer for the Alienware 18 Area-51 gaming laptop. This configuration with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti graphics card is down from $3,300 to $2,800, which is still expensive, but you wouldn't want to miss this chance at $500 in savings. You have to hurry though, as stocks may run out at any moment!

Buy Now

Read more
Save $100 on our pick for the best printer
HP includes full ink bottles with the Smart Tank 7602.

What do we need to print these days? Tax forms, student essays, and clearly-legible letters? Not so much. Bright invites, pictures, and presentation accompaniments? Yes, yes, and yes! In today's world, the typical person's needs in an inkjet printer are far different than the last time you were likely to have bought a printer. And the industry is catching up. Right now, our pick for the overall best printer of 2025 is $100 off as part of early Prime Day deals. That makes the $450 printer just $350 if you buy now. Plus, it comes with two years of HP's ink included. So, tap the button below to go check out the HP Smart Tank 7602 for yourself or keep reading to see what we like about it and what we found out during our review.

BUY NOW

Read more
Apple’s work-from-home powerhouse is 24% off… and about to go extinct
The MacBook Air on a table in front of a window.

Hard-hitting MacBook deals are rare. People love their products and will happily buy them at full price, so sales aren't as incentivized as with other products. So, when we see a $400 savings on the most powerful version (the 24GB of RAM one) of the MacBook Air M3, dropping its price from $1,699 to $1,299, we love it. And that's exactly what's happening as part of this early Prime Day deal and one of the most exciting laptop deals in recent dates. Tap the button below to see it for yourself, or keep reading to get all of the details about the MacBook Air M3, what we discovered when we used it ourself, and why this deal may be the last of its kind.

BUY NOW

Read more