Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web, envisioned it as a free, open and safe tool for everyone.
Now the World Wide Web Foundation, founded by Berners-Lee a decade ago, has launched its #ForTheWeb campaign, which calls on governments, companies and the public to safeguard against threats to the founding principles of his invention.
A central part of the campaign is a report, The Case for the Web, which reflects on what the web has enabled humanity to accomplish over the past 30 years. It examines the current trends that threaten the future of the web, and outlines actions we must take to reverse them and ensure that the web remains free and open for everyone.
The report shows that over half the world’s population is still offline, and the growth of people coming online is slowing dramatically. Online abuse is on the rise, and the content we see is increasingly susceptible to manipulation.
Over 1.2 billion internet users live in countries where net neutrality – the idea that all data should be transmitted over the web at the same speed, regardless of what that data is or who is accessing it – is not protected, and more than 1.5 billion people live in countries with no comprehensive law on personal data protection, leaving them particularly vulnerable to increasingly common incidents involving breaches of personal data.
One of the main purposes of the foundation’s report is to propose a number of policy recommendations in support of a ‘Contract for the Web’. Due to be published in May 2019, the contract will define the responsibilities that governments, companies and individuals should have in order to create a safer, freer and more accessible web and protect the billions of people going online every day.
You can read the full report and sign the ‘Contract for the Web’ by visiting the fortheweb.webfoundation.org and you can learn more about the #ForTheWeb campaign by visiting the links below this article.
This article is a derivative of World Wide Web Foundation content licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence. The original can be found here.