Tim Berners-Lee spoke with the BBC about the creation of a new group to deal with trust mechanisms for websites. In this words: “On the web the thinking of cults can spread very rapidly and suddenly a cult which was 12 people who had some deep personal issues suddenly find a formula which is very believable,” he said. “A sort of conspiracy theory of sorts and which you can imagine spreading to thousands of people and being deeply damaging.”
Most interesting in this is the recognition that one simple index won’t work and that a variety of brandings may be required. Broadening out from trust, the World Wide Web Foundation will explore ways of making the web more accessible to people, particularly through mobile phones, likely to be the easiest ramp on for many countries. I think it’s vital that this type of activity is encouraged. The web needs to be shaped by more than commercial or political interests, though it remains to be seen how socially-focused this new foundation is over time.