By Ian Hollidae, 2025/03/17

The inventor of the web, Tim Berners-Lee, wrote an interesting article in the Financial Times (via archive today) about the walled garden nature of social media:

Now let us talk about the opportunity to build new systems that are better for society and for individuals. When the web started, you could make your own website so long as you had a computer and an internet connection (admittedly back then this was a big proviso). You could get a domain name like abc.com and put whatever you liked there. You could blog, and link to other blogs. You were part of an incredibly valuable thing from which you seemed to contribute a tiny bit and gain a great deal.

That feeling of personal empowerment we sometimes call digital sovereignty has since been lost.

Ironically, the original article is sitting behind a paywall.

I admit the article was somewhat of a self promotion piece for his Open Data Institute but that's beside the point. As far as I can tell, he's long been a critic of walled gardens. However, it seems like some of the critism is starting gain more and more of an audience. Is there a real turning point near by?

Tags: Social Media