Slow the Web Down
I’ll be quick, I know you are very busy. So much online content to devour, so little time. The fast web — the online analog to that salty-sweet fast food that makes us feel sick — has arrived in full. Too much web content is junk food, cooked up fast and cheap, and we’re increasingly malnourished. Context seems exotic, blocked by banners, takeovers and pre-roll, obscured by click bait and sponsored links, concealed behind click farms, black box algorithms and walled gardens.
Context: 1 : the parts of a discourse that … can throw light on its meaning. 2 : the interrelated conditions in which something exists or occurs : the environment, setting.
Like the food economy, in today’s attention economy, the web is incredibly fast, dirt cheap (free!), and easy to consume. But too much of it is lousy. Just as our industrial food economy fueled an obesity epidemic, today’s online economy feeds us content that makes us collectively dumber. The junk we are gorging on is polarizing our political views, dividing us, and even making us feel sick.
Content is the food of the web, but the ecosystem is failing. The ecology of online content seems to be on the brink.
Part of the problem may be the way our content comes to us, ad-powered, centralized at unprecedented levels. If context is king, Facebook and Google rule the world. They own the algorithms that determine much of what we search and discover every day, shaping what we learn, believe, and share. Not surprisingly, they account for over 76% of internet advertising growth too. This is too much their web, not ours.
We’re part of this context too. When we are online, we are part of this online ecology — sharing while we are gathering, consuming content while data about us is also being consumed. Look closely and it’s increasingly unclear who is the consumer and whom is the feed. We’re no longer in control.
We need a call for a slow web movement — an Omnivore’s Dilemma for web content— that helps us build and protect the right kind of future for this global public good. A web that sustains, enriches us. A web with more space for creativity, curiosity, wisdom, even mindfulness. Space to think. Space to create. Space to breathe.
Because let’s be honest. How often do you actually feel good when you put your phone down after browsing? And yet, how long does it take before you pull it right back out of your pocket? We’re addicted.
The original rules Carlo Petrini asserted for the slow food movement are right for the web too. Content on the slow web should be three things: good, clean and fair. Good means quality content, built with care, not reheated or on the cheap. Clean means content produced and distributed transparently and in the open. Fair means content adequately priced for both content consumers and producers. It seems to me like we’re out of whack on all three.
We as consumers also share context in this two-way interaction. A slow web means that users can decide when to share, and when not to share. Momentum is building to enable us as consumers to make this choice. Ad blockers are flawed, but the 200M desktop and 400M mobile users who use ad blockers are calling for a web that gives us all greater control of our own data.
Non-profit Mozilla, where I work, is doing its part to help strengthen the ecology of content on the web. We’ve launched a new initiative we call the context graph that aims to complement Facebook’s social graph and Google’s search graph with a new kind of recommendation system for the web. We’ve also kicked off a new equal rating innovation challenge as part of a larger effort to strengthen the diversity of content on the web by emphasizing content quality, not corporate power. We’re doing these things not just because we think they are right, but because people are increasingly demanding them.
And consumers have more power than we realize, every day. When you ‘slow down’ the way you consume online, and take a moment to venture beyond the news feed candy, or the ads on the first page of your Google search results, or even support independent actors like Firefox, you consume a little healthier and make the web a little stronger. Step out of the fast web feedlot. Look, taste, and chew before swallowing. Browse around a bit more. Know where your content comes from. You are what you eat!
