Vint Cerf: It's on all of us to fight online abuse, fake news - CNET

Another timely internet reality check

""This is a sociological problem in large measure," said Vint Cerf, speaking at the SXSW Conference and Festivals. "Our technology has outraced our intuition about its social consequences."

His comments came just hours after Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, published an open letter detailing his worries about the web, including problems like "fake news." Though harassment and fake news have been problems since the internet's early days, those problems have risen to prominence with the sprawling popularity of social networks like Facebook and Twitter, and with the bitterness that flavored the US presidential election campaigns last year.

Cerf, who works at Google as its chief internet evangelist, likened social pressure against bad online behavior to the force of gravity.

"One solution is to say, 'Don't do that, it's wrong, it morally wrong,' which sounds weak," he said. "Gravity is the weakest force ... but when you get big mass, it's powerful.""

Vint Cerf: It's on all of us to fight online abuse, fake news - CNET