Web 2.0

From eg

Do not attempt a definition of the abused term:web 2.0. It's hopeless and misleading. There might be some hope to define the term:web properly some time before version 3.1 but it's too late for 2.0 to mean anything other than "GFDL corpus namespace and user-generated content in all its implications. See Living Ontology Web for a more specific definition of a more viable term that focuses on the shared ontology of services.

So-called web 2.0 technologies, since they rely primarily on user-generated content, present risks for human rights far in excess of current systems:

To start with, if we are inviting people to participate wherever they are, we run the risk of endangering those who live under the most repressive regimes. So we need to work out how to participate safely. A good start here is the RSF Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents... And there is the dark side of web2.0 itself; that we are entrusting more and more data about ourselves and our social networks to tools which are increasingly owned by large corporations (c.f. the recent purchase of MySpace by Ruport Murdoch). For me it is important that we embed human rights awareness from the start, without getting carried away by the cool grooviness of the latest Google application. Anyone who doubts the potential risks should check out [ current Amnesty International web actions on Yahoo, Microsoft and Google... - Dan McQuillan

Unfortunately, to "embed human rights awareness" requires more than simple compliance with a host country's user privacy law, but requires dealing with claims users make about other users that third parties can read, and consequences such as libel suits. It also requires some means of dealing with contentious political problems like when the public interest is involved, how online journalism is conducted, whose definitions to follow when people all over the world can post and read, and dealing with translation. See open politics in force and the real web 3.0 for political and technical solutions to these problems.

Without the sociosemantic web to sort out definitions, a living ontology compiling the operational tests that can be used for neutral moderation, open configuration to remove powers of host countries and ISPs, and democratic domains run by users who share risk and purpose, the so-called web 2.0 seems mostly fated to be defined as a dead-end or mistake, a privacy disaster that made bad people rich.