
Principles for a Contract for the Web - cezar-augusto
https://contractfortheweb.org/
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icebraining
It's interesting to compare with the Declaration of Independence of
Cyberspace: [https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-
independence](https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence)

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sarcasmOrTears
Who decide what's best in humanity? Who decide what's civil discourse? I guess
those in power. So, go away.

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nine_k
Interestingly, in the beginning they talk about "internet", and later switch
to "the web".

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bepvte
This contract is very funny with the GDPR tracking cookie notice at the bottom

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mudil
And Google and Facebook on the forefront of privacy commitments.

Foxes are in charge of the hen house.

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cityzen
Hard to take anything like this seriously with Facebook's logo on there.

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this2shallPass
Facebook and Google. Does either organization "Respect consumers’ privacy and
personal data So people are in control of their lives online"?

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nine_k
At least, Google allows you to download your data.

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matt4077
This so-called "contract" uses the language of compromise: different interests
each making about equal concessions in order to achieve some collective
greater good.

Yet the substance isn't there. One party gets away with only the sort of
instructions a toddler usually hears: go out and have fun, be the best you can
be!

Yeah, that's the category of users/citizen. I'm sure even the vacuous promises
asked of users will find plenty of outrage here, because for some reason
"respecting civil discourse and human dignity" is taken as a scandalous attack
on the _real_ victims of everything that happened since enlightenment, namely
young white men who just want enrich the marketplace of ideas with innovative
new anti-semitic memes and HRC rape fantasies.

But in any case it's a meaningless promise because there's no way to nudge
those opposing such notions of decency towards compliance. The real world has
the old neighbour's stern look of disapproval as a low-intensity intervention
to corral people into what's considered manners, or decency, or legal. That,
plus mechanisms of reputation, and the difficulty of choosing one's company as
freely as one does online has traditionally ensured norms of behaviour. None
of those mechanisms has managed the jump online.

To suggest something that would actually make for a substantial contribution
by users, here's an idea that you will hate, which sort-of proofs my point:
users should, at least in principle, be willing to tolerate some
advertisement. As in: not animated, not obscuring content, with tracking
limited to maybe some broad categories, and not consuming more bandwidth than
appropriate. "willing to accept" should include, for example, some efforts by
ad blockers to automatically categorise ads and selectively block harmful and
annoying ads.

I'm somewhat certain that ads follow the 80/20 rule, and blocking just 20%
could give users all they actually want while preserving at least the
theoretical chance for ad-financed journalism.

This would seem to be rather meaningful, considering societies life and die
with the quality and availability of information. And contrary to some utopian
fantasies in the mold of the Cluetrain Manifesto, the web has not actually
lead to the emergence of a suitable replacement for a paid journalist to
schlepp to city council every morning.

I know many regard ad blocking as an act of self-defense. And I agree, at
least in principle, maybe not quite with the overly dramatic testimonials of
grievous personal harm. Adtech has just gone too far, and thereby provoked
this sort of arms race in the first place.

To find a better equilibrium, those two sides would need to find a way to
deescalate, which would require some sort of tacit agreement, or a sequence of
tit-for-tat disarmament. But that's quite hard to pull of for two amorphous
group with no relevant mechanisms or structures for coordination.

I dunno... Maybe some sort of contract?

