Internet inventor Tim Berners-Lee slams Conservatives for misinformation campaign

The inventor of the World Wide Web, sir Tim Berners-Lee has criticised the Conservative party for spreading misinformation during the general election campaign. Photo: PA - Credit: Archant

The inventor of the World Wide Web has criticised the Conservative party for spreading misinformation during the general election campaign.

After the Tories rebranded their press office’s Twitter account as a fact checking body, Sir Tim Berners-Lee accused the party of “unbelievable” impersonation.

The Conservatives made their Twitter account appear to be an independent fact-checking organisation for the duration of the debate, even declaring that Boris Johnson had won the debate before returning their Twitter to its usual use.

In an interview with the BBC, Berners-Lee said: “That was really brazen. It was unbelievable they would do that.

“It was impersonation. Don’t do that. Don’t trust people who do that.

“What the Conservative Party has done is obviously a no no. That’s amazingly blatant.”

Sir Tim Breners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989, and has always backed its use by everyone for free.

Thirty years after he created the web in Geneva, Berners-Lee now tells the BBC he is concerned about the way it has developed.

Berners-Lee went on to draw a comparison between what the party did and someone impersonating a friend for the purpose of defrauding them.

Elsewhere in the interview, Berners-Lee went on to call on Facebook to stop allowing political adverts on its platform, following a similar decision made by Twitter.

Berners-Lee appealed to the company’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, to ban them before the election.

He said: “It’s not fair to risk democracy by allowing all these very subtle manipulations with targeted ads which promote completely false ideas. They do it just before the election, and then disappear.”