‘All kinds of things have gone wrong’ says inventor of the web

THE inventor of the World Wide Web last night warned his creation was being used to spread ‘disturbing’ hate speech and misinformation – and he called on technol- ogy companies to do more to stop it.

Tim Berners-Lee (pictured) urged businesses and governments to sign up to new rules protecting people’s freedoms.

He also warned that vast amounts of personal information collected by big companies was being used to manipulate individuals.

Mr Berners-Lee, 63, told the Web Summit in Lisbon last night: ‘Most people expected the web to do great things.

‘If people kept the web free and open then people would do good things – what could possibly go wrong? ‘Well, all kinds of things have gone wrong. We have fake news, we have problems with privacy and [abuse] and people being profiled and manipulated.’ The World Wide Web Foundation, which he founded, has called on governments, companies and citizens to back rules – a ‘contract for the web’ – which would reverse such trends. In the late 1980s, Mr BernersLee came up with key internet concepts, such as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), used to build websites and addresses for each page, known as URLs – without which, we would not have the internet.