Inventor of World Wide Web Sir Tim Berners-Lee calls for crackdown on fake news

The inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has said the impact of fake news is increasingly concerning and unveiled plans to tackle "unethical" political advertising and the harvesting of data. The British computer scientist said, exactly 28 years after his invention, three new trends have become alarming in the last year. In an open letter, the 61-year-old said misuse of data has created a "chilling effect on free speech" and warned of "internet blind spots" that are corrupting democracy. One problem, he wrote, is that most people find their news and information through a "handful" of social media sites and search engines, which are paid whenever someone clicks a link. "The net result is that these sites show us content they think we'll click on -- meaning that misinformation, or fake news, which is surprising, shocking, or designed to appeal to our biases, can spread like wildfire," he said.