Tim Berners-Lee, father of the web, says governments need to enact protective laws – 5/9/2023 – Power

Considered the father of the internet, British scientist Tim Berners-Lee said he was in favor of governments creating laws to protect users in the network environment.

The topic has mobilized attention around the world and, in Brazil, the Lula government (PT) is trying to pass the so-called Fake News Bill in Congress.

“The web is a powerful thing, but what has to change for the better are the platforms”, said Berners-Lee, this Tuesday (9), at the opening of the 5th International Meeting of Rectors, in Valencia (Spain), an event promoted by Universa, an educational company of Banco Santander.

Tim Berners-Lee created the world wide web in 1989, which revolutionized society and designed the internet as we know it today. He said that, given the first experiences with the web, he did not imagine where things could lead, such as cases of manipulation of elections, citing the election of Donald Trump and Brexit.

“We came to the conclusion that governments need to do something and they have to put in place control laws to deal with the bad stuff,” he said. “So that people’s data is not stolen or misused. It is not a question of disconnecting, ending a network when there is an election time, what we have is to use and employ this network well”.

Currently, at the age of 67, he is a professor and researcher at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), in the United States. A physicist by training, Berners-Lee created the www while working at the Cern Calculation Center (originally the European Council for Nuclear Research, now the European Organization for Nuclear Research), near Geneva, Switzerland.

The scientist said that the number of sites grew very quickly in the 1990s and he hoped that quickly everyone would be connected. But soon something was out of control.

“People managed to realize that it was something that was reaching a point that perhaps is out of our control, the issue of privacy, that people can be manipulated,” he said.

For him, it is important that “people take back control” of the internet, and that would open the door to many other possibilities. “When people see the web and that Trump’s election was made possible through manipulation on the web, Brexit, people realize they want to take back control on the web, and we have to correct that direction. Have technology to correct that course. “

Berners-Lee was the protagonist of the first agenda of the 5th International Meeting of Rectors. The Santander event brings together until Wednesday (10th) in Valencia 700 university leaders from 14 countries, mostly from Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula.

The reporter traveled at Santander’s invitation