dynamiteReady wrote:

Forbes article on WhatApp/Signal/Telegram:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2021/01/14/3-things-to-know-before-quitting-whatsapp-for-signal-or-telegram-or-apple-imessage-after-backlash/?sh=163d1e5164f6

There are these projects aiming to improve the quality of the news by having humans go in and fact-check and flag problems. But if you look more closely, you will see that some factchecking sites find 95 per cent of errors in media outlets on the left side of the political spectrum, and other ones will only find errors in the media outlets on the right. It’s unclear exactly what criteria they use.

We decided to build something entirely automated. It’s a work in progress, but we use machine learning to classify news articles on all sorts of different metrics: by the topic that they are about, whether they are left or right, pro- or anti-establishment, in-depth or quite breezy, more inflammatory or quite nuanced. The tool is a bit like Google News, but with a bunch of sliders underneath, so you can adjust for what you want to read.

Google’s got some notable allies who agree with that: Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the world wide web, submitted his opinion (see number 46 here) that “the Code risks breaching a fundamental principle of the web by requiring payment for linking between certain content online.” Vint Cerf, another founder of the internet who helped design TCP/IP, shared similar thoughts with the Committee, though it’s worth noting he currently works for Google as its Chief Internet Evangelist.

To the Senate Standing Committee on Economics,

I am grateful for the opportunity to make a brief submission for the Committee’s consideration, as it conducts its inquiry into the proposed News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code.  I write in my capacity as the inventor of the World Wide Web, which I invented in 1989, first developing an information management system and then implementing the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol client and server via the internet.  The World Wide Web is now accessed by more than half the world’s population, including an estimated 21 million Australians.

My comments do not address the entirety of the proposed Code, but are limited to the area where my perspective is most relevant.  Specifically, I am concerned that the Code risks breaching a fundamental principle of the web by requiring payment for linking between certain content online.

On the web, the sharing of content rests on the ability of users to do two things: to create content, typically text but also other media; and to make links in that content to other parts of the web. This is consistent with human discourse in general, in which there is a right, and often a duty, to make references.  An academic paper is required to list references to other papers which are related.  A journalist is normally required to refer to their sources.  The discourse of bloggers involves links from one blog to another.  The value of the blog is both in the text and in the carefully chosen links.

Before search engines were effective on the web, following links from one page to another was the only way of finding material.  Search engines make that process far more effective, but they can only do so by using the link structure of the web as their principal input.  So links are fundamental to the web.

As I understand it, the proposed code seeks to require selected digital platforms to have to negotiate and possibly pay to make links to news content from a particular group of news providers.         

Requiring a charge for a link on the web blocks an important aspect of the value of web content.  To my knowledge, there is no current example of legally requiring payments for links to other content. The ability to link freely -- meaning without limitations regarding the content of the linked site and without monetary fees -- is fundamental to how the web operates, how it has flourished till present, and how it will continue to grow in decades to come.

Like many others, I support the right of publishers and content creators to be properly rewarded for their work.  This is without doubt an issue that needs addressing, both in Australia and around the world.  However, I firmly believe that constraints on the use of hypertext links are not the correct way to achieve this goal. It would undermine the fundamental principle of the ability to link freely on the web, and is inconsistent with how the web has been able to operate over the past three decades.  If this precedent were followed elsewhere it could make the web unworkable around the world. I therefore respectfully urge the committee to remove this mechanism from the code. 

With many thanks for your kind consideration.

Tim Berners-Lee

A sketch for micropayments

Last time, we examined many past approaches, like making MP part of an existing commerce mediation company like PayPal or Amazon, already set up to bill your credit card account. Online news junkies might sign up with a business that interfaced with hundreds of publisher websites. By click-opening an article, a reader triggers the automatic debiting of 1 cent to $1. If a reader is disappointed by the item, under a certain threshold of time, he or she clicks “CANCEL.” Or you might choose a smaller, partial payment… or else slip the seller a bonus, if you really liked it.

This single silo approach has advantages. One company might make lots of money by convincing all sellers and buyers to use it as their central nickel and dime exchange, as is being attempted right now by Blendle. Parallels with iTunes and Spotify come to mind. But those silos help customers to curate a specific kind of product – music – a simplicity that helps keep customers “resident” within the company’s paywall.

One variation would be to keep each item or article behind a micro-paywall as customers click interest, adding cumulatively up to a set threshold. When the number of potential customers reaches a trigger point, the price suddenly goes to zero; all those contributing during the mandatory pay period could be listed as sponsors. Those who are first to pay get future discounts and recognition, not only for promoting the article but for helping make it free for those who follow.

Is that the promised Secret Ingredient? In fact, I don’t favor it much, nor the silo model. Neither method looks far enough ahead, to the coming era of an Internet of Things, when information “providers” and “customers” will include vast arrays of trillions of machines, sensors, distributed components, all of them needing and offering data. In that coming era, information exchanges and transactions will parse extremely fine, swapping nano- or even pico-payments for every datum exchanged, perhaps resembling the way each of us “pays” the sensor cells in our fingers by providing them with nutrients. Under those conditions, if some giga-corporation or government winds up mediating and controlling this maelstrom of rapid contracts and interactions, the silo approach will be a surefire ticket to Orwellian nightmare.

poprock wrote:

It’s a bad idea. It restricts the web to those who can afford it, even more so than now. Fuck that right in the eye.