
Why Tim Berners-Lee is no friend of Facebook - kurren
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/28/tim-berners-lee-open-web-mark-zuckerberg-facebook
======
labster
I don't get why the issue of Peter Thiel and Gawker was grafted onto this
article. Even if you do think something of value was lost when Gawker was shut
down (and I don't), I can't see how it's relevant to the issue of the walled
garden Facebook is trying to create. They don't even mention Free Basics or
internet.org. Rather than elevating an issue of real concern, it makes the
whole piece come off as "kids these days are ruining my internet".

~~~
helloworld
_Thiel’s strategy [to shut down Gawker through litigation] demonstrates how
tech money...can now also suppress freedom of expression...._

I think the writer is pointing out the irony that an investor who has
benefited enormously from an open web has now effectively made it less open,
because of the potentially stifling effect of lawsuits like his.

~~~
S_Daedalus
It would be a powerful argument, except that Thiel's money wasn't as
instrumental in killing Gawker as Gawker's own behavior. The same attacks
levied against, say, the NYT wouldn't have accomplished anything except losing
Thiel money.

~~~
shard972
I feel like we are getting to a scary place in society when you can spin
funding a successful lawsuit into suppressing free speech.

I mean if Tiel was pouring millions after millions into failing lawsuits that
just aim to drain whatever money he can sure but a single successful lawsuit?

~~~
sangnoir
> I feel like we are getting to a scary place in society when you can spin
> funding a successful lawsuit into suppressing free speech.

It's not spin if it is true: a suit does not need to be successful to ruin the
targeted victim - simply defending yourself from a lawsuit costs a lot of
money, good luck defending yourself from a well-resourced nemesis.

Without commenting on Gawker's culpability, I will draw parallels to Mother
Jones, which was _also_ sued by a billionaire[1] (Vandersloot), but they
managed to beat the suit.

Incensed, VanderSloot set up a million dollar fund available to _pay the legal
expenses of people wanting to sue Mother Jones or other members of the
"liberal press."_[1]

MoJo even weighed in on Thiel v Gawker, stating _For the likes of VanderSloot,
Adelson, Thiel, and Trump, the courts have become an avenue not so much for
vindication, but for exacting a price_ [2]. They've been in the trenches, I'll
take their word over people who assume only the guilty get punished by the
justice system.

1\. [http://www.motherjones.com/media/2015/10/mother-jones-
vander...](http://www.motherjones.com/media/2015/10/mother-jones-vandersloot-
melaleuca-lawsuit)

2.[http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/thiel-trump-
vand...](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/thiel-trump-vandersloot-
lawsuit)

~~~
Chris2048
> likes of VanderSloot, Adelson, Thiel, and Trump

> They've been in the trenches

Thiel isn't like the others in that list. And was Thiel and the others not "in
the tranches" too?

~~~
sangnoir
> Thiel isn't like the others in that list.

If it wasn't clear - I was quoting a Mother Jones article (which I agree
with). And if you don't mind my asking, how is Thiel different from the
others, if the premise is that the others are weaponizing the courts to exact
a price on their foes?

> And was Thiel and the others not "in the tranches" too?

"In the trenches" isn't a metaphor I would use for Thiel and the other
aggressors; I would say he was more than 200 miles behind the front in an air-
conditioned tent with a fridge and a decanter of whisky in the corner.

~~~
Chris2048
> weaponizing the courts to exact a price on their foes

Because his case had merit. The price exacted was just punishment for crime.

> isn't a metaphor I would use for Thiel

because he's wealth and well off? I don't think any of the publications
employees had to skip a meal either.

It wasn't Thiel that threw the first punch. Was was brought upon Gawker's head
was brought on by themselves. Describing punishment for crime as "being in the
trenches" divorces from the situation the most important thing - right and
wrong. I don't know about the MJ cases, but Gawker was in the wrong.

------
intended
Wow, the article is terrible and doesn't do anything to express the hypocricy
of Facebook.

Heres why Facebook and Zuckerberg are hypocritical - Freebasics and net
neutrality.

Freebasics is a closed system, with FB as the gatekeeper. In its previous
iteration it was internet.org. Only the utter debacle (for FB) that was the
Indian Netneutrality debate, caused FB to rebrand to the more accurate
:freebasic.

Before that they were happy to portray themselves as providers of the internet
to the poor. When asked why they needed a model that created them as
gatekeeper, instead of cheap/free/advertizer supported internet with actual
openness, they tweaked their model but were tone deaf to the gatekeeper role.

With NN, they support it in the states in order to combat telecoms. In India
and in other places, they support telecoms and Anti NN positions to further
their ability to be the only site users go to.

Zuckerberg is old enough to know the difference between walled gardens and
open internet, as are most of his engineers.

Discussing hypocrisy would indicate some sort of moral center in the first
place. Facebook is for itself, and is a creature for the perpetuation of its
existence.

------
Aqueous
I think that in spite of Facebook and other 'walled gardens' or 'silos,' the
web is more open now than it's ever been, even if it's tempting to argue
otherwise. Everything you need to build a web application like Facebook is
free to try and use, up to a certain amount of traffic at least. AWS, Heroku,
and other platforms make it possible to develop and host a complete web
application for free and to make it publicly available on the Internet for
anyone to use for free. Most of the technologies that underlie Facebook are
freely available as open source. There are billions of freely available
tutorials and communities built around programmers helping each other for free
(some of whom, I'm sure, work for Facebook). So I don't buy the notion that FB
has 'pulled up the ladder behind them' so to speak, as the article insists it
has. Nor do I believe that it has the power right now to do so. The only thing
Facebook has done that the author seems to object to is to be extraordinarily,
unprecedentedly successful. There are a lot of things I find toxic about
Facebook, but I don't begrudge it its success.

~~~
destructionator
> AWS, Heroku, and other platforms make it possible to develop and host a
> complete web application for free and to make it publicly available on the
> Internet for anyone to use for free.

I have been running complete web applications from home for free for anyone to
use for a long time. _That_ is what the web is about - you don't need a
dedicated, centralized host. Anyone can connect to it and anyone can run
servers on it. It isn't terribly difficult to do, nor costly, I do it on a
budget residential broadband connection.

Granted, it might not scale to millions of users, but neither will heroku's or
AWS's free/low-cost tiers either.

~~~
Brendinooo
Is it within the terms of service for your ISP to do so? I was always under
the impression that if your provider caught you trying to do that they'd lock
you out and make you get a business plan, but I suppose I never took the time
to figure out an answer for sure.

~~~
boyaka
These types of restrictions are exactly what refute the grandparent's claim
that the web is more open today. Legislation, copyright, centralization and
consolidation of services (ISP, cloud applications, cloud servers) have
certainly made the Internet more powerful, but these trends have weakened what
the Web was really about, as stated in the parent.

For me one of the greatest times of freedom was during the life of Geocities.
This was actually the only time I had a website, and I was in middle school.
Sure, there was a lot less people on the Internet, but it was a very wild wild
west atmosphere and I feel like a larger portion of the users created their
own home pages than today. Malicious parties were not as widespread and
powerful, and there was overall not so much control over everything. I was
also using Napster at this time.

I've studied computer engineering and I've still had a hard time having the
feeling / spirit of freedom and ease of contributing to the Internet as I did
back then. Maybe it's because I'm not creative anymore, or because I'm too
cheap to pay for or too disinterested in putting my content onto services, or
because there's a lot more to worry about with running your own server, or
because there's too much visibility/scrutiny/copyright enforcement. Doesn't
have the same feeling of openness as back then.

~~~
z3t4
More reasons why you do not have your own homepage ... discoverability: If
there are no one linking to your webpage you do not exist. It's as Google
broke the web by making a too good search engine. Most sites now a days is
just a dead end, while web sites used to have lots of links that let you dig
deeper into the subject. And instead of finding ten quality and peer-reviewed
articles you now find thousand of crappy search-optimized articles.

Then there's the lock-in again. Instead of writing your web sites in pure
HTML, they are now locked inside a database in some content management system.
You can't simply move to another provider.

Also there's the domain names, or rather _web addresses_ , they are too damn
expensive. There need to be a free top level domain name so that _web
addresses_ stay longer then a year. Maybe only allow ten free domains per
person to prevent hoarding.

~~~
tdkl
> Also there's the domain names, or rather web addresses, they are too damn
> expensive.

Really ? A year of a .com, .net, .org costs less then monthly internet bill.

Not to mention there have been many services offering subdomains of a rich
domain list in the past.

I used them in the beginning of high school before finally buying a .net,
putting it on a home DNS server with IPv6 tunnel and gain "l33t" points on IRC
with a custom hostname.

~~~
z3t4
The domain cost is probably 90% of what it costs to host a web site. The
problem with sub-domains is you have a weaker ownership and much higher risk
compared to owning a .com domain, it's not like Verisign will shut down
anytime soon and take all .com domains with them. I would be surprised if the
sub domain you used in high-school still exists and links to your webpage. I
also used to run a few web pages on free hosting in high-school, but they have
been shut down a long time ago, so the links no longer works. But at least I
still have some of the source code saved. After posting I found the .free TLD.
I hope it will be like Letsenccrypt, but easier.

------
20yrs_no_equity
Violating someone's privacy by publishing them having sex is not protected by
the first amendment.

Maybe you think it should be. I personally think it is protected if the people
being photographed consent to the publication, and a violation of privacy if
they don't. (Privacy and free speech are both human rights, they don't
conflict.)

We can have that conversation, though, if you think that privacy isn't a human
right.

But the people who are upset about this don't seem to be talking about that.
They don't talk in terms of human rights, they paint Theil as a bad guy and
try to paint him as being opposed to freedom of speech.

But can you cite a single quote from Theil that has him on the record as
opposing freedom of speech?

We should not accept this kind of smear as if it were legitimate argument. It
doesn't appeal to reason or argument it is characterization.

And it is eating all discourse. For every time I see an actual argument
against a policy of Trumps (notice how they dragged him into it?) I see at
least 150 claims that he is a racist. Not quoting him saying something racist,
just a smear. And that ratio is probably higher, because to be honest I
haven't seen any coverage of Trump in the last 6 months that makes a good
reasoned argument against one of his positions.

It's not like it's hard.

Here's one of Trumps positions I disagree with: We should have open borders.

Closed borders is really saying that a company can't hire who they want to
hire- that you can't hire the best and the brightest in the world and bring
them to america, one of the things that made america great in the past. We
shouldn't nationalize talent we should have a free market in it and let anyone
who has a job offer (at least, there are legitimate arguments for an even
lower bar) come to the country.

There. That's an actual argument against a Trump position.

A similar argument could be made against Theil. They almost make one against
Zuckerberg (but in the end they resort to characterization of Facebook as a
"walled garden", which by that definition means The Guardian is a walled
garden because the editors control what is published on their site.)

Discourse is dying. Don't let it.

------
jondubois
The ending of this article reminded me of Peter Thiel's article "Competition
is for Losers" [http://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-
for-l...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-
losers-1410535536)

Peter Thiel's article is really well researched but his conclusions about
monopolies are wrong and dangerous. Monopolies are terrible for society -
Monopolies allow companies to enforce arbitrary rules which everyone must
follow with no means of escape (it's essentially a total dictatorship). If you
got fired from such a company, where else would you work? The CEO could
literally just rape anyone they wanted and no one would be able to speak up.
Worse than that; the media will probably tell you that it's actually an honour
and you should be thankful! What sort of world is that?

Then he uses past history - The fact that monopolistic companies like Google
tend to encourage and reward innovation as an example of why monopolies are
good but he completely omits the fact that Sergey and Larry were raised in a
highly competitive environment (and that's why Google is like this).

Wait a few generations and you're going to see the elite 'inheriting' class
develop into a generation of spoiled entitled brats who have no interest for
innovation because they're too busy having fun.

It sounds like Peter Thiel wants to turn Facebook into a mega-corporation to
take over the world. He has a very black-and-white view of the world which I
find really dangerous. He thinks that there is one correct way to do things
and that this way is always correct.

The biggest problem is that as soon as you allow a corporation to get a world-
dominating monopoly, there will be NO WAY OUT - That corporation will always
have the power to manipulate the media and keep everyone locked in their
places - There will be NO GOING BACK.

Peter Thiel severely underestimates human greed and ego (both of which he has
plenty of). His monopoly idea is only good for people like him - The fact that
he thinks it's good for EVERYONE just shows how out of touch he and his
friends are.

------
bluejekyll
This is a challenging debate. What does it mean to be open vs. closed. And
what would a service like Facebook look like if it was "open"?

> the Facebook founder has no intention of allowing anyone to build anything
> on his platform that does not have his express approval.

I assume this is based on the fact that you can not directly use facebooks
APIs, and can not utilize Facebook itself. Facebook does allow for people to
link out to other sites content, so in that way there is no barrier to
_seeing_ external sources in Facebook. An external site can't extend the
experience of Facebook though, but I don't know of any successful web business
that does allow this.

I'm curious of examples that actually meet the definition of open which he's
using. Almost all sites require a form of login, many news sites are putting
up paywalls, and there have always been private services requiring login to
get at secure data.

So, the openness that I think people want, is access to the Facebook user
base, but I would argue that everyone already has that, in is the rest of the
web. The difference is Facebook is not going to give that to any other
companies, because that user base is their revenue stream.

To me this isn't a problem until people are incapable of accessing anything
other than Facebook. This would be like the AOL of 1992, before most AOL users
realized there was more to the Internet than what AOL gave them. I don't think
people will want to go back to that. But competition will constintently pull
on this. Email is not dead, Messenger is not the only messenging platform.
Btw, I find myself barely ever using Facebook these days.

And a question, what sites operate in the way this article wants? There were
no examples. Reddit?

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> Almost all sites require a form of login

Almost no sites require a form of login.

You _can_ login to most sites, but primarily so that you can keep a persistent
pseudonym and set preferences. You can browse almost every site without
logging in. There is nothing that stops you from e.g. linking to a YouTube
video from your own site regardless of whether you have a YouTube account. For
Facebook you need an account to even see the large majority of the content.

> So, the openness that I think people want, is access to the Facebook user
> base, but I would argue that everyone already has that, in is the rest of
> the web. The difference is Facebook is not going to give that to any other
> companies, because that user base is their revenue stream.

Which is why people dislike them. Who wants to be somebody else's "revenue
stream"? Replacing Facebook with a decentralized social network that no single
party controls would be better for everyone but Facebook.

~~~
postmaster
> For Facebook you need an account to even see the large majority of content.

For Facebook you only need an account to see content that the user / page has
deemed not public. This has nothing to do with Facebook and everything to do
with the owner of the account / page that publishes the content you're wanting
to see.

[https://www.facebook.com/YCombinator/](https://www.facebook.com/YCombinator/)

Do you need to be logged in to view PUBLIC posts or comments on that page? No,
you don't. Now if you were trying to visit Mark Zuckerberg's personal profile
obviously, yes, a very large amount of content is NOT going to be visible to
you.

This is no different than every other site out there. Sure, you can read the
news and comments posted on this
([https://news.ycombinator.com/](https://news.ycombinator.com/)) webiste, but
you most certainly CANNOT post comments without having an account.

~~~
craigsmansion
> For Facebook you only need an account to see content that the user / page
> has deemed not public.

Or want to view public pages without them being covered by some obnoxious "See
more of PAGE by logging in."

Yes, it's the account owner's fault for using Facebook in the first place. But
they're likely always logged in, and so are most of their visitors, so they're
only marginally aware such problems even exist.

Blame that can be squarely placed at Facebook is exploiting such gaps in
knowledge from their users to pressure non-users into signing up.

> This is no different than every other site out there.

This is vastly different from almost every other site out there, except for a
few big players. The Internet is still a huge place, at least for the time
being.

Facebook is a major erosive force on the Internet as it tries to quietly
subsume and privatise it, and using it to publish content on is contributing
to the demise of one of the few globe-spanning projects our species ever
managed to get right.

~~~
postmaster
> . . . being covered by some obnoxious "See more of PAGE by logging in."

> . . . pressure non-users into signing up.

These days you'll see similar examples by visiting any forum. Want to see some
code, or a link someone posted? Sorry! You have to login or register.

> This is vastly different . . .

OK, OK. I'm sorry. This is most certainly, however, similar to any other
website out there that uses real identity; don't let me get everything muddied
by trying to compare real identity web to the anonymous web.

> Facebook is a . . .

Lol? I don't even. There's so many die-hard Facebook haters out there. Go
build open source applications that do what Facebook is offering and does it
better and before you know it the company should be gone. I'm solely basing
this on the amount of comments I see for people coming out against Facebook,
rather than ever for it (or even just playing devil's advocate). It seems to
always be a circle jerk.

~~~
type0
> Go build open source applications that do what Facebook is offering and does
> it better and before you know it the company should be gone.

I can't imagine that would ever be the case. People hate on facbook for being
behemoth that it is. No kind of open sour project would defeat it unless it is
backed by the same amount of money. Who would dare to finance such an effort?

------
shitgoose
this article reminds me of an old Soviet joke: an army psychologist shows
soldier a brick and asks "what do you think about when you look at this?".
Soldier answers "chicks!". Psychologist "chicks?? why?". Soldier "i always
think about them".

some bizarre chain of reasoning: Lee, Zuckerberg, Thiel... Trump???

------
throwanem
This could have been a great article, but its author mistook a strong position
for a weak one and dragged in Thiel, Gawker, and Trump. This foolish attempt
to bolster something that didn't require it has totally confused the issue, to
the point where everyone here is arguing over matters that have no
significance to the question ostensibly at hand.

It's a real shame. There's a conversation around Facebook that needs very
badly to happen. A better article than this one could have done much to
advance it. But the structural flaws evident here render the work useless, or
worse than that.

------
49531
There are a lot of other organizations and corporations I would say are doing
more to kill the internet than Facebook. I don't think everyone who builds
something on the web should be compelled to be open.

Who cares that Facebook is a walled garden? I'd say their investments is open
source tools has outweighed the fact that my grandma spends her browsing time
in a silo.

------
atnixxin
I don't think this adequately covers why Facebook is no friend of the open
web. What the company tried to do in India with FreeBasics (and I'm a co-
founder of the campaign that fought them off), was carve out a part of the
open web for themselves.

Factor this: 1\. Websites had to apply to be available to FreeBasics users,
else not. 2\. They had to conform to Facebook's technical requirements (which
could have arbitrarily been changed by Facebook), and more importantly, comply
with Facebook's own terms and conditions. 3\. The data-cost differential
between the open web and FreeBasics meant that users would have gotten some
information, but would think twice before accessing the open web because it
would cost them to do so. 4\. This is from sources, but the figure that
Facebook mentions for people accessing the open web after "trying" free basics
is merely the number of people who have clicked on a link, not those who have
bought data connections. So it's hardly an on-ramp. 5\. In India, we have the
only data ever released about FreeBasics, in terms of users: only 20% of users
who used FreeBasics till May 2015 had never used the Internet before. 6\.
There's a better way of increasing Internet access than this. Facebook has
ignored other models for providing Free Internet access: the equal rating
models from Mozilla, for example. 7\. Countries in the EU where Zero Rating
has been implemented showed that ISPs had a lower tendency to drop data rates
for regular usage.

One journalist in Gujarat (an Indian state) told me how retailers stopped
pitching FreeBasics to customers because the service was being marketed as
"FreeNet: Free Internet service", and customers found that they were being
billed for using sites other than FreeBasics sites.

We run the risk of Facebook becoming the primary and perhaps only site
accessed, as has been indicated by surveys done in Indonesia (by LirneAsia)
and Nigeria (I think; by Quartz).

The bigger risk is the notion that because the platform is entirely controlled
by them, they define the norms, they get to control creation of content and
services. The Internet, when access is neutral, is a place where all users are
equal, and all users are both consumers and creators. A better product or a
smarter strategy, or fund-raising capability has the ability to challenge
giants: Facebook beat myspace. Non-neutral Internet access creates separates
consumers from creators, and reduces the freedom that creators have to
innovate.

Facebook is doing what is best for its business, not for the open web. Look at
what has happened in case of Instant Articles, and the reach of fan pages:
Facebook is prioritizing publishing on its own platform and giving that
content greater reach with users. It has also deprecated reach for fan pages.
Of course, it's not that changes in google search and youtube's algorithm
don't hurt creators, but with Facebook, what is clear is that the intent isn't
increasing relevance: it is exercising control to improve monetization.
Publishers who are going with Instant Articles are missing the long game: the
bait-and-switch.

So yes, Facebook celebrating the open web looks hypocritical.

