Web Standards & the Rise of Fascism
These are opinions of lola's lab alone, and no other organisation.
As Trump gears up for his second term, many Big Tech companies are bending the knee by either donating large sums of both personal and corporate money to him, changing their company policies to be more in-line with his values, or both. Whether these companies are fascist or not is besides the point, they are actively supporting a president who is, and are likely doing so because of fear of retribution if they don't. Trump holds grudges. It's all about the continued capitalistic success of the company, if the government puts rules in place that negatively affect how much money can be made or how much government funding/tax-breaks can be awarded, it will negatively affect their bottom line.
Late last year, the World Wide Consortium (W3C) published The Ethical Web Principles(EWP) which lays out how the W3C sees the web. "The web is for all people", "There is one web", etc. While these principles are good and position the W3C as an institution in support of safety, autonomy and privacy of web users, some people questioned the point of them since the W3C actively works with corporations who actively and routinely go against these principles. I think this is a misunderstanding of the role of the W3C in the web ecosystem.
The web has always had a systemic problem in regard to who can access it, and with access, who can create on it. These problems are also reflected in the W3C where Big Tech is overrepresented because Big Tech can afford the fees that are required to participate. This will mean there is less diversity of thought and experience when standards are being created, however, this is why the EWP (and other similar documents) are important.
The EWP is a rubric for how potential standards should be assessed when they come to the Technical Architecture Group (TAG). The TAG approve and disprove specifications based on a number of factors, including how well they meet the Privacy Principles, if they're interoperable, if they're novel, if there's user appetite for the specification, if it improves the web ecosystem &/or user experience of the web, etc. And while the TAG has representatives from Big Tech, it also has a number of unaffiliated Invited Experts who don't have to consider Big Tech's KPIs in their decision-making process. Documents like the EWP give TAG, specification authors and editors, and W3C members a rubric for creating standards.
The web is run by bad actors, the bad actors are the ones who have funded and put money into it in an attempt to own it. However, it's not the role of the W3C to police the bad actors (this really should be down to governments). When companies participate in the standardisation process, it's the role of the W3C to ensure that the standards that are produced don't harm web users or the web ecosystem. While it hasn't always been successful in this, I think implementing and enforcing documents like the EWP is a step in the right direction.