Tim Berners-Lee—Called for breaking up Facebook and Google - consistently criticized surveillance capitalism and addictive design
Berners-Lee has been a consistent critic of Big Tech's business models. In 2018, he suggested Facebook and Google 'may have to be broken up' due to their market dominance. In 2025, he criticized the attention economy: 'The web is being hijacked from an intention economy to an attention economy. The user has been reduced to a consumable product for the advertiser.' He has also stated: 'When you make an addictive algorithm you know what you're doing.'
Scoring Impact
| Topic | Direction | Relevance | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Antitrust & Competition | +toward | secondary | +0.50 |
| User Autonomy | +toward | primary | +1.00 |
| User Privacy | +toward | secondary | +0.50 |
| Overall incident score = | +0.393 | ||
Score = avg(topic contributions) × significance (medium ×1) × confidence (0.59)
Evidence (1 signal)
Called for breaking up Facebook and Google - consistently criticized surveillance capitalism and addictive design
Berners-Lee has been a consistent critic of Big Tech's business models. In 2018, he suggested Facebook and Google 'may have to be broken up' due to their market dominance. In 2025, he criticized the attention economy: 'The web is being hijacked from an intention economy to an attention economy. The user has been reduced to a consumable product for the advertiser.' He has also stated: 'When you make an addictive algorithm you know what you're doing.'