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Online users see their rights and freedoms threatened by major technologies, according to World Wide Web Inventor Tim Berners-Lee.
With half of the world's population expected to be online by next year, Berners-Lee has launched a global campaign to protect people's rights online and preserve the Internet. His "contract for the Web" will force Internet companies to respect the confidentiality of data and to "support the best of humanity".
At the inaugural conference of the Web Summit in Lisbon on Monday, Berners-Lee announced a new charter to combat abuse, discrimination, political manipulation and the centralization of power online in a small number of large corporations. technology.
Berners-Lee called on governments, businesses and individuals to support a new "Web Contract" that would have "clear and difficult responsibilities for those with the power to improve it".
Support
More than 50 organizations have already expressed support for the new initiative, including Google and Facebook.
Berners-Lee said the world was "at a critical point" with half of the world's population expected to be online by May 2019. However, he said the number of people online was slowing , which widened the digital divide.
"Those of us who are online have their rights and freedoms at risk," he added, highlighting a number of threats, including privacy.
Mr. Berners-Lee, computer scientist who invented the Web in 1989, said that his creation had changed the world, for better or for worse. He said that very early in society, most people thought that the Web could only be a good thing, but we have learned in recent years that this was not necessarily the case.
Rebuild trust
He said he wanted to restore trust on the Web while improving Internet access to those who are not currently connected.
Paddy Cosgrave, co-founder and CEO of Web Summit, said the technology was "upsetting everything we thought was certain of the world, society, politics, and life itself."
Nearly 70,000 participants from 159 countries are in Lisbon for the Web Summit of the year, including about 1,000 Irish
Nearly 70,000 participants from 159 countries are in Lisbon for the Web Summit of the Year, including around 1,000 Irish. In total, 23 conferences are taking place in nine main stages and about 1,200 speakers are expected, including Twitter co-founder Evan Williams and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
EU Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager, President of Samsung Electronics Young Sohn, Stripe Co-Founder John Collison, Microsoft President Brad Smith, Tinder Co-Founder Sean Rad and UN Secretary-General , Antonio Guterres, are also part of the speakers.
The Web Summit begins seriously Tuesday morning with speakers, including Slack co-founder Cal Henderson. Twitter co-founder Ev Williams, who now runs the Medium online publishing platform, will close the event on Thursday.
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