W3C TAG Ethical Web Principles

Our vision is for a World Wide Web that is more inclusive, and more respectful of its users: a Web that supports truth better than falsehood, people more than profits, humanity rather than hate.

It discusses the problems of loss of information about complex evolving systems and derives a solution based on a distributed hypertext system.

This is for everyone #london2012 #oneweb #openingceremony @webfoundation @w3c

This is for everyone. Not just for everyone to consume, but for everyone to make.

[U]sers want control over the look of HTML documents - and should be afforded the means[.]

In case of conflict, consider users over authors over implementors over specifiers over theoretical purity.

If a trade-off needs to be made, always put user needs above all.[…] The internet is for end users: any change made to the web platform has the potential to affect vast numbers of people, and may have a profound impact on any person’s life.

Design features to be accessible to users with disabilities. Access by everyone regardless of ability is essential.

I think that it is essential for multilingual documents where character sets might be changed even on the same line.

Enable publication in all world languages.

Ensure that features work with the security model of the web.

Features should, when possible, work across different platforms, devices, and media.

[The] internet economy [is built] on the back of defunding high-cost, quality content in order to subsidise a stream of low-cost, largely low-quality, often misinformation, conspiracy, or hate garbage.

[It] has become increasingly clear to me that tech and the internet as they operate today are causing structural damage to our collective institutions that runs deeper than seems to be understood.

I define surveillance capitalism as the unilateral claiming of private human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioral data.[…] We rushed to the internet expecting empowerment, the democratization of knowledge, and help with real problems, but surveillance capitalism really was just too lucrative to resist.