this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2026
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When Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web in 1989, his vision was clear: it would used by everyone, filled with everything and, crucially, it would be free.

Today, the British computer scientist’s creation is regularly used by 5.5 billion people – and bears little resemblance to the democratic force for humanity he intended.

In Australia to promote his book, This is for Everyone, Berners-Lee is reflecting on what his invention has become – and how he and a community of collaborators can put the power of the web back into the hands of its users.

Berners-Lee describes his excitement in the earliest years of the web as “uncontainable”. Approaching 40 years on, a rebellion is brewing among himself and a community of like-minded activists and developers.

“We can fix the internet … It’s not too late,” he writes, describing his mission as a “battle for the soul of the web”.

Berners-Lee traces the first corruption of the web to the commercialisation of the domain name system, which he believes would have served web users better had it been managed by a nonprofit in the public interest. Instead, he says, in the 1990s the .com space was pounced on by “charlatans”.

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[–] rav3n@ttrpg.network 5 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

"The internet should be for everyone, except the people I don't like." - average modern internet user

Glad he's able to call out the domain name system for the crock of shit that it is.

[–] JATtho@lemmy.world 3 points 1 hour ago

It's always the fucking DNS. .__.

[–] Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works 7 points 7 hours ago

The internet isn't broken... Humanity is.

[–] DudeImMacGyver@kbin.earth 20 points 14 hours ago

*web inventor

[–] darkpanda@lemmy.ca 88 points 20 hours ago (4 children)

They kind of fix this in the lede, but dude did not invent the internet, he invented the World Wide Web. The internet is a superset of a whole bunch of things that includes the World Wide Web, but dude wasn’t out there inventing TCP/IP and routers and whatnot.

[–] LittleBorat3@lemmy.world 2 points 9 hours ago

People say wifi when they mean the Internet, somehow one cannot expect accuracy. Articles always get written by professional clueless people also.

[–] HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works 20 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

Nowhere does it say he calls himself the creator. I'd be looking at the media for labelling him that.

[–] ripcord@lemmy.world 8 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

They're replying to the article title, which was incorrect but has now been fixed.

[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 2 points 14 hours ago

Nowhere did they say he called himself the creator, either. They only replied to the statement presented.

[–] Eldritch@piefed.world 9 points 18 hours ago (8 children)

You're thinking of the ARPANET. When people think of the Internet. They think of the network that Gore pushed hard to open to the public. And the interface Lee designed. Gopher is having a small resurgence, and Gemini exists. But effectively what the average person sees as the Internet is their child philosophically.

I mean as a techy you aren't wrong. There's a lot of underlying things and technologies that sort of glosses over. But to the layperson at large we're just pedantically nitpicking.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 15 minutes ago* (last edited 12 minutes ago)

But to the layperson at large we’re just pedantically nitpicking.

Important to mention. The idea that the internet isn't actually on their box is already a frontier of public communications.

But, for Lemmy's sake, yeah email, straming, VOIP and video calling, whatever IOT or app protocol.

[–] Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 15 points 17 hours ago (10 children)

Gopher is having a small resurgence, and Gemini exists.

You forgot email. That seems like a pretty important use of the Internet that isn't the web.

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[–] rollin@piefed.social 7 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

And the "World Wide Web" mostly means HTML - "hypertext" documents which can be published on the internet, and which are regular documents but with embedded links to other documents (hyperlinks), and a vision to ultimately create the "semantic web" - human-readable text which can also be processed by computers.

[–] flubba86@lemmy.world 28 points 19 hours ago

To be exact, Tim Berners Lee invented the original HTML specification, the HTTP communication protocol, and a proof-of-concept browser that implements both of them. These three things were required - on top of TCP, IP, Ethernets, that already existed - to build the Web.

[–] Rhaedas@fedia.io 6 points 19 hours ago

The original hypertext proposal was even more complex than what we ended up getting, connecting ideas both ways.

[–] frisbird@lemmy.ml 38 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

You supported DRM dude. Self critique, renounce your mistakes, and if you really want to go after ICANN, give me a call.

[–] thesmokingman@programming.dev 18 points 18 hours ago

For those that don’t know, he ultimately backed EME which was dumb.

[–] mlg@lemmy.world 9 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

WWW has been a complete crapshow ever since it started simply because it became popular.

It was designed to serve documents over the internet, except everyone co-opted for their own needs like websites, APIs, etc.

That left us with broken as hell crap at every layer from the joke that is HTML/CSS, the clownshow that is HTTP, and the circus that is JavaScript.

And don't even get the started on the mountain of vulnerabilities being stupid obvious crap that wouldn't dare to fly in even basic GNU utilities at the time.

Adding insult to injury, this guy hasn't even provided a valid solution to this mess like hyphanet or the very newly released freenet.

Which by the way tries to hack cheat the system with WebAssembly so that it doesn't have to deal with HTTPS directly since its an exclusive client server protocol.

[–] Luisp@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

You should check out his new js project

[–] AntiBullyRanger@ani.social 1 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

I know you wrote this in jest.
But no, don't give threadiverse brain damage.

[–] minorkeys@lemmy.world 11 points 19 hours ago (3 children)

It doesn't matter how noble your intent when inventing or researching, once business has control of something, it is used to gain power and control over people. All you scientists and engineers and researchers need to starts accepting your own contribution to this monster, held accountable for the technologies you help businesses unleash on all of us.

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 25 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

We do not blame Prometheus for what the arsonist did.

[–] Zombie@feddit.uk 6 points 17 hours ago

Zeus did...

[–] Attacker94@lemmy.world 8 points 15 hours ago

I think your coming on a little heavy, if you are trying to say that inventors should build systems that are resilient to misuse, I whole heartadly agree. But how your post seems it would imply that no one should be inventing anything that could possibly be corrupted or face the consequences, which is quite a huge pendulum swing that wouldn't cause the outcome I think you are looking for.

[–] porous_grey_matter@lemmy.ml 10 points 18 hours ago

I agree with the first part, but scientists and engineers are not that much more complicit than literally everyone with a job. Those businesses couldn't have done that without marketing, hr, janitors, tradespeople, lawyers etc etc etc either. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism and there is no ethical job.

[–] KiwiTB@lemmy.world 5 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

He didn't invent the internet.

[–] Zorque@lemmy.world 9 points 18 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Jesus_666@lemmy.world 10 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Note that what Gore said was that he "took the initiative to create the Internet". That's actually true; his lobby work for a civilian network were one of the most significant factors in commercializing ARPANET. He never claimed that he invented the thing.

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