Social media could 'provoke nastiness': Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee

There could possibly be more negative effects of social media than positive, the founder of the World Wide Web has said at a Sharjah forum.
Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee was speaking at the International Government Communications Forum on Wednesday, where he touched on topics ranging from open data policies to the dangers of social networking sites.
He said that even though the Internet has allowed for a two-way communication, social networking sites, such as Twitter, could "provoke nastiness".
"One of the things that social media and the Internet give us is for people to realise all communications are not one-way. In an ideal world, we can end up with people who always have different ideas or one who has a problem and another has the solution - these people will be more in equilibrium since communication is both ways," Lee said.
He added that it's important for users to understand information sharing policies of social media sites.
"Personal data is kind of famous, for example, just this week and what's been reported about Facebook," he said. "It's very important to understand what's happening with Facebook and other social media. Some of these things happen accidently and some happen deliberately."
sarwat@khaleejtimes.com