Berners-Lee: Social networks are 'walled gardens' threatening Net neutrality

by Steven Mostyn - Nov 23 2010, 05:59

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the world wide web (www), has warned that popular online businesses, services and social networks are fracturing the values of Net neutrality and potentially threatening the Web’s future development.

Voicing his concerns via an essay in Scientific American, the technology pioneer said the Web “is being threatened in different ways. Some of its most successful inhabitants have begun to chip away at its principles.”

According to Berners-Lee, social networking platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Friendster pose a threat to Web innovation because they create walled gardens where user-posted content is contained within the host service and access from outside is denied. 

“These closed, walled gardens, no matter how pleasing, can never compete in diversity, richness and innovation with the mad, throbbing web market outside their gates,” said the renowned Webfather. “If a walled garden has too tight a hold on a market, however, it can delay that outside growth.”  

Not limiting his “closed world” comments to the likes of Facebook, the online pioneer also took a swing at the rising number of Web addresses where “http” is being replaced by trade names or brand names (i.e., Apple uses “iTunes” rather than “http” on its multimedia store).

From Sir Tim’s perspective, legislation protecting Net neutrality is required in order to preserve one of the Web’s most intrinsic values.

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