The World Wide Web has serious problems: it invades our privacy, pelts us with fake news, and aggravates our anxieties, while making a handful of big companies enormously powerful. Where did these problems come from, and what should we do about them?
"Free" isn't free
explains that a major cause of all these problems is what it dubs the Original Sin of the web: collecting personal information about users and selling it to marketers. It argues that although better laws could help, the key to a better web is for us users, rather than marketers, to become the customers. Written by a software developer and data scientist,
is concise and cogent, with practical advice for people who build the web, public officials who regulate it, and all of us who use it.