Berners-Lee: Social networks are a ‘threat to the web’

by  Carrie-Ann Skinner

Founder of the web Sir Tim Berners-Lee has slammed social networks claiming they are “a threat to the web”.

Berners-Lee believes Facebook and other social networking sites enourage users to enter their information, which is captured and then reused, but not shared with other websites.   “Large social-networking sites are walling off information posted by their users from the rest of the web,” he said in the Scientific American journal.

Singling-out Facebook, LinkedIn and Friendster, Berners-Lee added: “Your social-networking site becomes a central platform – a closed silo of content, and one that does not give you full control over your information in it.”

“The more this kind of architecture gains widespread use, the more the web becomes fragmented – and the less we enjoy a single, universal information space.” ……

On the subject of net neautrality, Berners-Lee said it should cover both fixed internet lines and mobile broadband.  report