Father of the Internet Urged to Tighten Regulation of Political Advertising

Sir Tim Berners-Lee is calling for tighter regulation of political advertising on the Internet in his open letter, because it is used in “unethical ways”.

The inventor of the worldwide web explains that political advertising has become a sophisticated industry, which draws on huge amounts of personal data on Facebook and Google, so that the ad campaigns could create precisely targeted ads for individuals. For example, there were 50,000 daily variations of ads on Facebook during the recent US election. Such approach can go an unethical way and voters can be pointed to fake news websites. Besides, messaging can be used to discourage people from turning out to vote.

Sir Berners-Lee points out that the lack of regulation in political advertising on the Internet is a trend that threatened the openness of the web, along with the loss of control over people’s personal data and the spread of misinformation online. While most of the users agree to provide personal data to tech firms in exchange for the ability to use free services online, the problem is that these tech firm have too must control over that data.

The 61-year-old British computer scientist says that the worst side-effect of this data aggregation is the way governments are watching every citizen’s move online and passing laws legalizing snooping and hacking tools used by security services. Another concern is that it’s too easy for misinform people online, especially due to a huge consolidation in the way Internet users find news and information online on such service as Facebook and Google, both of which select the displayed content based on algorithms learning from the harvesting of personal data. As a result, such websites display content they think the users will click on, thus allowing misinformation or fake news (surprising, shocking, or designed to appeal to our biases) to spread across the web almost instantaneously. As such, people with bad intentions can use bots and trick the system to spread misinformation for their financial or political benefit.

The Web Foundation, an outfit founded by Berners-Lee 8 years ago, is dedicated to improvement and availability of the web and addresses these issues as part of its 5-year strategy.