An improbable plot to save the free web
The web as we know it is broken. We can intuitively grasp it. Powerful platforms have hijacked our data to control the lifeline of what the free internet is built around. We need a fair deal to make sure that bloggers and builders get paid. We–the users–hold the key to a free internet in our hands: Our own data. This is how we could do it.
The early days
It’s hard to remember the difference that the web made in its early days. One memory that seems more out of a history book than my own memory is when my Dad asked me to look something up in the dictionary when he couldn’t answer my question. I remember my world being very small. With the web things were available, they were accessible – and more importantly for a 12-year-old boy – they were free.
The freedom of easily accessible information is hard to value today with a version of the internet that at times can feel like there is too much information and in fact too little value. What happened to the beauty of the decentralised internet that was home to a wild bunch of independent blogs and full of builders with a shared excitement for their niche project?
HTTP and other heroes
The first version of the web sprung out of labs and universities. There was no money to be made. Paying online was hard. Even the first eBay sales relied on sending physical checks across the country. This was the time when most of the web standards were written and the architecture of what we still use today conceived. The people that created the web made sure that standards were open and control was dispersed. This is why there is no fee to send emails (thanks, SMTP) or visit websites (good job HTTP). In fact, we owe the free internet to a bunch of researchers that didn’t patent this architecture but released it as open-source.
Thankfully the internet grew as more and more people discovered it. Server capacities were needed and hobby projects evolved into full-time work and people needed to get paid. So how do you make money in the digital space that is designed to be open and free? The implicit agreement online became simple: Attention (and later personal data) would be exchanged in return for free services and content. That deal worked well for over a decade for users and for the bloggers and the builders. Until the platforms evolved.
The Market for Lemons and Bots
In 1970 George A. Akerlof published a scientific paper based on a common observation that would later earn him the Nobel price in economics. He described the market for used cars. Auto dealerships suffered from what he coined ‘asymmetric information’. The salesman might know that a car had a serious defect, but still try to sell it as barely used. The average consumer has little ability to judge the quality of a used car. You could assume that this helps the car dealership, but the opposite is the case. The consumer – aware of the weakness – has to assume bad quality and thus his willingness to pay suffers. The incentives push the market to trade “lemons” (a common terminology for junk cars). Akerlof shows how information asymmetry leads to dysfunctional markets with a race to the bottom in terms of product quality.
So why am I telling you about used cars when this is about the free web? Well, because the market for attention online has become a market for ‘Lemons’.
The market for user attention is called online marketing and has evolved into a multi-billion industry, but also an industry with high information asymmetries. In this case, the publishers are the car dealers and the advertisers are the buyers.
But let’s start from the beginning. Game, news and forums began advertising to its users to fund operations. The early measurement was simple. So simple that users attention was literally measured in eyeballs. Pages got paid by how many visitors came to their site.
The relevance of users obviously differed between users of a recreational online game and visitors of a financial publication. So did prices. In addition to that, some sites had a reputation for gaming the amount of attention they reported. Ad buyers started differentiating based on the expected quality of the good. The market worked as it rewarded a relevant and authentic user base with high prices and price-discriminated against fraud-riddled one.
The next evolution step de-coupled reward from attention and quality. At first attention started to be bid off to the highest buyer. The process required an expected reward. To calculate the reward tons of historic data mined to determine the desired characteristics that made a user likely to ultimately buy the product at display. These characteristics were then matched – in real-time – with the person currently visiting the page. Things just got more complex, but market forces should theoretically still reward a high-quality user base.
Except, only very few companies knew who you were and what you were looking for. But knowing you and your desires is the key ingredient for this new system. However, the game companies, the publishers, the bloggers and builders, everyone who made the internet great and open, they don’t have this ingredient. They do not own a database that tells them pretty much everything about a person who has used their service and even about those that never did. Just two companies, which today dominate 60–70% of the ad market, can tell. Everyone else is stuck in a market with high information asymmetries potentially trading ‘lemons’.
Why should you care?
You might ask yourself now, why should I care? In the last couple of weeks and months, we have seen that centralized infrastructure is a single point of failure. We need a healthy ecosystem that allows a diverse set of independent actors to build things, inform people or provide services. Otherwise, our free internet may stop being free. The old deal might not work out any more.
Or even worse: markets for “lemons” will result in low-quality reporting, driven for even more clicks to somehow sustain itself. When quality isn’t rewarded, why bother writing an in-depth piece when a simple click-bait headline will do? Sounds familiar? We are years into the free internet becoming a market for ‘lemons’ already. And this extends to other services and products online. If we care about a high-quality version of the free internet, we need to start caring about a fair distribution of the spoils to the people that create these products. We need to start caring that our bloggers and builders get paid.
The grandiose new world that I discovered as a boy, that opened up my world, enlightened and entertained me will not be there. My child might get to know the free internet only as a wasteland. Some call it a wasteland already.
Decentralization doesn’t matter until it does
Usually, the saying goes that the originator would turn in their grave. However, the internet is still young and we can just ask them. In fact, we don’t need to ask. Tim Berners-Lee wrote about his worries about platform dominance and the ownership of personal data.
When the founders of the infrastructure that is our current web started, it wasn’t clear that sharing of personal information would be a thing, let alone become so important. Otherwise, it would have certainly been an open-source zero-margin standard just like email or server communication is.
It’s time to build an open source zero-margin protocol to rebuild the original deal of a free, fair and open web.
Building a data commons
We are setting out to build an open source protocol to reshape the way that user data is shared and stored. We need to crack access wide open to ensure fair competition. We need to equip the bloggers and builders with the right tools to compete against the platforms. This data needs to be taken out of the proprietary silos and into a data commons.
The best time to introduce such a protocol would have been at the inception of the web. The second best time is now.
For the first time, we have the tools to align two concepts that have been on opposite poles: Data integrity and data privacy. With the development of what is called the Web 3.0, we have the tools to ensure data privacy while having pseudonymous metadata publicly available. We have awareness both from regular users and from the regulator, that something is wrong.
We don’t think we have everything figured out, but we want to start by introducing a basic standard to exchange user information in a fair and open way. Come join us and help us build a missing piece of the web.
It’s in our hands
The good thing is: We can decide if we want to enable the change ourselves. Everyone of us. We hold the data that is necessary to inject information into the market to make it function again and to restore a healthy equilibrium. Introducing standards when the market is just shaping up is easy. Now we have the biggest companies in the world stacked against us. Let’s not kid ourselves: The plot to save the free web is improbable at best. But we have to try.
We can jointly shape the standard that we build for our collective selves. Our decisions — which might look irrelevant as a single action — amass to us changing the equilibrium. It’s time to break the duopoly of the platforms and push back against the trend of a centralized, siloed and proprietary internet. Let’s redistribute the money stream that funds the free web towards the bloggers and builders. Let’s get our free web back.
