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The W3C publishing ethical web principles is like OPEC publishing ethical climate principles.
Who are the members of the W3C?
Google,
Facebook (Meta),
Amazon,
Adobe,
SoftBank,
Yahoo!,
…
The W3C is the standards body of surveillance capitalism.
Ethical principles? W3C? Don’t make me laugh!
If they had any ethics they’d have expelled their most prominent members starting with Google and Facebook.
But, hey, I might be wrong and the #W3C now fully believes in its new ethical web principles. In which case, they will no doubt take action and expel members that only exist because their business model relies on violating them.
#Google is fundamentally incompatible with the W3C’s ethical web principles and should be expelled from the W3C as it relies on violating section 2.5 (The web must…respect people’s privacy).
Also, §2.2 (The web should not cause harm to society).
Ditto #Facebook, etc.
(I won’t hold my breath.)
@aral
Perhaps it’s time to form a people’s standards body with no corporate influence and get open source browsers on board to follow it instead of W3C.
@aral
Regulatory Capture: The gift that keeps on giving!
@aral I might add a little bit of nuance to this. A person isn't a company, and a company isn't a person. Big companies have pockets of people doing both good and bad things for both good and bad reasons. The bigger company, the bigger the potential for both the successes and mistakes. When multiple companies collaborate, more so.
@thinkMoult Yes, there are lots of good people who work at Google, Facebook, Palantir, X, Raytheon, and ExxonMobil.
(That doesn’t change the business models or toxic nature of those corporations. If anything, it just shields them from criticism a little. After all, if they were really that bad, would those good people work there? Sadly, of course, the answer, is yes, they would, and they do.)
@aral Yes, unless they take action (and that would be very surprising), this is a clear case of "ethics washing".
@davidrevoy @aral
Exactly! "ethics washing" indeed.
I wonder what will happen to ethical principles and meanings in the long term if it continues to be allowed this machiavellian usage.
@aral
Some direct feedback in between.
Thank you very much for your numerous and informative posts.
I really appreciate your posts and this one in particular.
@aral Sounds like a climate conference in Dubai.
@aral thank you.
at least now we know "eme" originally stood for "ethical media enshittification".
@aral They want to feel good about themselves. :)
@aral I stopped believing 'em once they accepted EME as standard.
@aral I started giggling at section 2.1 and didn’t get too far beyond that.
@aral I first thought this is Aprils fools day because the irony is too high in these principles 
only a minority of the 375 members would be in line with these.
@aral Textbook case of the fox watching the hen house, I think.
@aral ,
> Who are the members of the W3C?
> Google,
> Facebook (Meta),
> Amazon,
> Adobe,
> SoftBank,
> Yahoo!,
Hold on. Do you have any proof that this is true? From what source?
@expert Please, in the future, do a thirty second Internet search before accusing people you don’t know of disseminating false information.
@aral Section 2.5 of this standard was very funny to me. They couldn’t commit to anything stronger, and yet so many of their members fall short of even that by failing to adequately communicate the risks they pose to their privacy.