Why not a web that serves people?

TL;DR

I believe the web works best when it is open and people control it. Businesses can prosper without trapping people in one ecosystem. Open protocols and portability can let services and AI providers compete while people keep their privacy, safety, and choice.

Photo: Matthew Osborn on Unsplash.

Why this matters now

The web has delivered enormous social benefits, but much of online life now runs through closed platforms. These platforms can amplify manipulation, addictive behaviour, misinformation, harassment, isolation, and polarised public debate.

Over the last ~20 years, closed platforms and their incentives have gradually shifted control over identity, relationships, information, and discovery away from people and the open web.

AI is becoming another important way people encounter the Internet’s knowledge and ideas. Its shape is not yet settled, but companies are already racing to build their own ecosystems around it. We still have a chance to do this differently.

A web that serves society

The W3C’s ethical web principles provide a useful starting point:

• An equitable, informed, and interconnected society. The web should be secure, respect privacy, support healthy communities and debate, help people verify information, and give individuals more control.
• Human agency and dignity. The web should empower people rather than manipulate, isolate, or addict them.
• Healthy community and public knowledge. The web should support constructive debate, freedom of expression, trustworthy sources, and the ability to verify information.
• Openness in service of society. Universality and non-centralisation matter because they prevent any one platform or authority from controlling how people participate, connect, and share knowledge.

What I want from the web

For me, making this vision real requires:

• People in control: identity, relationships, content, and communications should be portable rather than trapped in one ecosystem. People should control their data, time, attention, sources of trust, and the algorithms that shape what they see.
• Trust over engagement: people should choose the voices and sources that shape their social world, including who they trust to help judge information. Ranking can be useful when people can understand, choose, and change it; maximising attention should not be the organising principle.
• Healthy incentives: businesses should be able to prosper without closing the web, preventing people from leaving, or consuming ever more of their attention. Journalists should be rewarded for trustworthy, evidence-based work, not for feeding outrage and echo chambers.
• Open in practice: protocols, data formats, and the interfaces needed for interoperability should be open even when services and software are not. Openness matters only if ordinary people can switch services without losing their social lives.
• Safe for children: as a parent, I think the web should make it easier for guardians and communities to create safe, age-appropriate spaces for children. This deserves particular emphasis.
• AI is part of the Internet: AI gives us a new way to access the knowledge, culture, and collective contributions people have shared online. It should not become another proprietary layer that captures this shared foundation and controls access to it. People should be able to choose providers, carry their personal context, understand the sources behind important claims, and retain control of their data.

To me, success means being able to connect with people, find information, or use AI while remaining in control, without being addicted by design or dependent on one company’s decisions.

What could this look like?

People could carry their identity, profile, relationships, and content between compatible services. They could communicate privately across provider boundaries, choose the systems that rank information, and inspect the sources behind important claims.

The same could apply to AI. People could change services without losing their personal context or connection to the underlying web.

Providers could still compete by offering different products, communities, moderation, AI models, and business models on this shared foundation. Portability can still protect other people’s privacy, security, and consent.

What we can learn from today’s platforms

Today’s platforms already show us both what works and where control gets stuck:

• Facebook and social feeds. Early Facebook centred on updates from chosen friends and family. Over time, algorithmic recommendations and advertising optimised for attention took more of the feed. The open web should restore the emphasis on chosen relationships and personal control.
• Google and web search. Early Google put simple web results first, with advertising kept distinct. Over time, ads, promoted material, and Google’s own content became more prominent. A search business should prosper by helping people reach the web, not by gradually displacing it.
• WhatsApp and private messaging. WhatsApp gets important things right: simple communication, end-to-end encryption, and no attention-driven public feed. But identity, groups, and history remain tied to one provider. People should be able to move between compatible services, subject to everyone’s privacy and consent.
• Twitter (now X), public conversation, and journalism. Twitter showed the value of short public posts, chosen voices, and discovering events as they unfold. But identity, reach, ranking, and trust signals remain under one company’s control. Public conversation should not depend on one platform, and journalism needs healthier ways to earn trust and make a living.

AI can be part of the open Internet

Generative AI, particularly large language models (LLMs), provides another test of these principles. Without the Internet and the vast body of language, ideas, and experience people have shared through it, these models could not do what they do today.

I think of chatting to an LLM as engaging with voices and ideas from across the Internet: an extraordinary but imperfect form of the wisdom of crowds, rather than an alien intelligence. To me, that is a hopeful reflection of the value people have collectively created online.

As companies race to build ecosystems around these models, familiar questions return. Who controls people’s prompts, conversations, and personal context? Can that information move between providers? Can we trust and verify the sources?

We risk repeating the pattern of closed platforms, but it is not inevitable. I am optimistic that competition and commoditisation will limit the lasting advantage of any one company. We can build AI that remains open enough for people to retain control and real choice.

Conclusion

An open web, useful AI, and successful businesses can coexist. So why not?

Why not reclaim social life on the open web through private and group messaging, public posts, identity, profiles, and feeds shaped by trust, and use AI built on the Internet’s knowledge without once again losing control of our personal data?

Businesses can thrive on this foundation without any one platform controlling how society connects, learns, and shares information.