The Web remains broken; a handful of malign actors continue to exploit the privacy of hundreds of million of users every day, selling their data to other suppliers, perverting democracy and creating disruption.
2020 will be a year in which some governments begin to take tougher action. In the EU and state of California there is now legislation making it illegal to collect or process private data without the user’s express permission. I expect more countries and regions to join them in the year and a number of high profile legal cases in the year resulting in multi billion Euro and dollar fines and even the banning of a few famous dot com suppliers altogether.
Unfortunately I think 2020 will be too early for governments to address the intervention of foreign governments in elections – mainly because those in office tend to be the ones that have benefited most. Nevertheless I hope that we will see new legislation to combat this newish form of corruption as soon as possible.
Fixing the Web will be difficult, but I especially welcome the actions of Tim Berners-Lee, its inventor, both in his sponsorship of the Contract for the Web and in his ideas of separating data from applications in his Solid development. I hope at least that we’ll be able to see that, in his terms, there will be more ‘roses’ than ‘thorns’ to look back on this time next year.
I wish all my readers a fantastic and successful 2020.
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Martin Hingley, December 31st 2019