“The web is broken, how do you fix it?”

The World Wide Web is broken. The spiritual parents of the web had an ideological approach, but it was overshadowed by business and political interests and the ‘fast moving stuff breaking’ mentality. With negative consequences for things like privacy and autonomy as a result. Signals about this are increasingly being provided by individual lawyers and activist organizations. But the tide is turning, they believe.

Simple searches for problems on the Internet as a whole quickly reveal that this is a multi-faceted monster: biased algorithms can avoid the use of tools from data-confusing technology companies, and commercially operated (social) media determine what the public can or cannot do with the self-reinforcing effect of fake news. .. The list is long. And feed the discussion. About superficial solutions, from the use of other digital tools to the need for profound computer transformations. So the motion is visible on both planes. Through the development of new tools – see boxes – and an understanding of the major movements that led to the current situation. For example, we have received a paradigm shift from company to corporate space (offline to online), which is not embedded in our organizations and is governed by our laws, said Jose van Dijk, professor of media and digital community at the University of Utrecht at the Public Spaces Conference earlier this year. We should not focus on how algorithms determine our Internet, Van Dijk believes, but on how we bring organizational values ​​into these public spaces.

Order
This does not change the fact that arrows are always aimed at great technology. Families familiar with investigations in the United States, social sites are constantly criticized in the media and efforts are mounting to counter them at the European level. Nevertheless, it is rare for problems to get smaller and closer, as has recently happened after research into the use of software in education. The use of the Google workplace poses unavoidable privacy risks to students and alumni, one of the results of research by Hockey School von Amsterdam and the University of Groningen. Education ministers Ingrid von Engelshoven and Ari Slope are the reason for raising the issue in the House of Representatives.

It connects with the lengthy debate about the big parties providing useful software to a sector, but can also see in detail what is going on. From this – in this case – a lot of valuable information can be obtained to improve education, but one aspect of the critique is that the data should be the property of the user. In addition, companies can continue to conduct research in their own way, and its format is not dictated by the software they need to work with. Because otherwise we will lose our autonomy.

Disruptions in a switchboard are important mass and ease of use. Often there are alternatives, but fewer people use them because they are often less convenient within themselves or a barrier to use. For example, after WhatsApp announced that Mothership would share data on Facebook, many users decided to sign up with an alternative service signal. If many of your contacts are still on a different platform, it is difficult to say goodbye completely.

Junk food
So it seems necessary for the ruling parties to clean up their affairs. The Swiss Center for Economic Research finds a solution to this by allowing users to vote. A review panel of approximately selected users may be formed to vote on key decisions, the results of which will be public. Their decision is then linked to the decision of the shareholders or their representatives on the board of directors to come to a final decision. The results of the two voting groups are weighed according to a pre-defined key. On the one hand, it affects users’ attitudes towards technology companies. On the other hand, user engagement helps protect data rights and ensure that mechanisms respect freedom of speech, as well as other desirable aspects of information delivery and dissemination.

Many types of such voting procedures are imaginary. For example, the voting process does not take place continuously, but simultaneously and with both partners and users – with the right weight – delivering the final result. In addition, in complex issues, the entire user group of users may tell.

The second direction is a ‘user board’. Again a user delegation, which can be created by random selection or by selecting representatives by other users. In a similar way to council elections. Representation of users in all matters relating to such matters as advice, veto and coding rights. With such rights, the Board of Directors is in regular contact with the Board of Directors and can negotiate with the Board on all matters with veto or co-decision rights. Decisions regarding users’ personal information, user access rules and audit rules generally require co-decision rights and veto rights often concern particularly important issues. In addition, some members of the Consumer Council may be elected directly to the Board of Directors to participate directly in the decisions and to ensure proper communication between the owners and the Consumer Council.

Healthy
It is clear that the technical parties are under pressure from many quarters. Collaboration is important for change. And where users are concerned. Collectively, users are a force to be reckoned with, says Nadim Kobizi, who works on the honest social media capsule. He sees a parallel with food. Using Facebook is going to get the same status as eating junk food every day. One positive aspect of this is that sites are forced to improve themselves. As McDonald’s has to improve its menus, and as the public sees more and more of them, healthy alternatives have emerged. This reduces both ways: the choice is growing and consumers can stay with their ‘old’ supplier for a healthier product.

Make the media better again
Make Media Larger (MMGA) wants to restore press ethics. There is a rat race going on online in which the media wants to report the news first or take charge quickly. As a result, startups report that the quality of the news has declined. There is a great need to develop critical thinking. A simple fact test is not enough. In addition to fact verification, there must also be argument-verification, because when facts are correct, they can still be misused in arguments. For example, the statement CO₂Emissions are actually good from plants that live in them, which is actually perfect, but the amount of CO₂ You just have to be more discriminating with the help you render toward other people.

At MMGA, a group of critical readers comment on fake news or misinformation. It is based on an open source annotation protocol, which guarantees the freedom of publishers. To counter the ‘Publish first, then check’ trend.

Word proof
This year, the Dutch Initial Wordproof Social Welfare Panel-European competition topped the blockchains, raising one million euros in financial support. This is because of the global time stamp ecosystem that can verify the authenticity of content on the Internet. In a nutshell: the brand of credibility for the first advertiser.

In the Netherlands, DPG Media was the first to use timestamp technology to protect articles. Search engines can also take into account the time at which articles are published when ranking articles. Theoretically place original articles above search results instead of reposts with good SEO scores.

After an article is published, its entire content is converted into a hash, consisting of numbers and letters of constant length. The hash is stored in the blockchain. The result is a certificate that can be issued through the site.

Technology also provides the opportunity to display edits to news articles.

WordPress is already a plugin for WordPress, with an API available for other sites.

Flick
According to American start-up Flick, the old web has many design flaws in its architecture. Users are not in control, networks are pitfalls, and infrastructure and protocols are centered around a few actors, so they are at risk of failure and abuse of power. To move to a new and fair web we need to rebuild from the ground up using open web protocols that provide a decentralized, reliable and unauthorized infrastructure.

So the two-and-a-half-year-old company creates an open web service interface and protocol layer that makes the basic layer of web services (storage, hosting, billing, etc.) of the new Internet accessible to all. Parallels can be found through CloudFlare or Netlife, but open.

Fleak currently supports over ten thousand sites and applications. The company said that most applications in the blockchain variant use Flick for hosting, and many non-fun token (NFT) programs use the computer for storage.

Capsule
In the field of social media, there is a high demand for better and more democratic platforms, but new initiatives are difficult to get off the ground. However, it is noteworthy that Nadim Kobizi was able to raise $ 1.5 million seed capital within a few weeks based on tweets about his plans for a better social media called Capsule.

The capsule will be built decently in the open infrastructure. The site must also be free of advertising. In a recent interview, the founder compared it to the business model of WordPress and KitLap, where the basis of the service is a completely transparent and open source. Has a high quality index through the involvement of the interested talented community.

What needs to be done differently is, for example, organizing the content. Kobizi points out that Twitter content is displayed chronologically, but now uses an opaque algorithm. With the capsule, users should prevent this by choosing how it is delivered. For example, by self-selected categories or by popularity. Regardless of the options, each method must be objectively verified.

In addition, content measurement should not be centralized, Kobizi believes. He finds merit in a system comparable to the original structure of the Internet: whether content can be uploaded should be a discussion between the user and the web host he uses, not on the social site itself. The user chooses his own hosting provider. In addition, hosts must be provided with the tools they need to deal with this – which the capsule wants to provide them with.