World Wide Web's creator upset at how messed up it has become

The famous World Wide Web, commonly abbreviated as WWW, is celebrating its 29th birthday today and on this occasion, its inventor claimed how bad it has become.

In an open letter appearing in The Guardian, World Wide Web's owner Tim Berners-Lee described a depressing picture of the current internet, which is pretty messed up. He blamed the main issue is centralization. Berners-Lee wrote, “The web that many connected to years ago is not what new users will find today.”

“What was once a rich selection of blogs and websites has been compressed under the powerful weight of a few dominant platforms. This concentration of power creates a new set of gatekeepers, allowing a handful of platforms to control which ideas and opinions are seen and shared,” he added.

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He said that how today the internet is dominated by huge platforms that do not have much innovation and have destroyed the rich blogs and small sites that were there before. However, he also mentioned that it’s still not too late to change and build ‘the web we all want’.

He further said that these large platforms have locked but their success by creating barrier. “They acquire startup challengers, buy up new innovations and hire the industry’s top talent. Add to this the competitive advantage that their user data gives them and we can expect the next 20 years to be far less innovative than the last.”

But, according to Engadget, Berners-Lee explained that these platforms are not properly equipped to work for social benefits since their focus is on profit and thus, regulation could help fixing this problem. “The responsibility – and sometimes burden – of making these decisions falls on companies that have been built to maximize profit more than to maximize social good. A legal or regulatory framework that accounts for social objectives may help ease those tensions.”