Tim Berners-Lee slams Twitter's 'negativity and bullying'; suggests new 'constructive' social networks now required

'We have responsibility to think how to build systems… to produce constructive criticism and harmony' says World Wide Web founder

Sir Tim Berners-Lee has slammed troubled social network Twitter, saying he "wonders about the way it's made" as the site seems to promote "negativity and bullying" instead of "constructive criticism and harmony".

Berners-Lee, speaking at the launch of Jessica Yu's film about the birth of the internet - ForEveryone.net - at Utah's Sundance Film Festival last week, added further weight to the currently rolling debate about Twitter's future after a week that has seen four top executives, as well as a senior employee at Twitter-owned Vine, quit the company.

While founder and CEO Jack Dorsey attempts to reshuffle the site's reasons for existing, a long-running accusation towards Twitter is that it facilitates negative behaviour targeted at groups or individuals.

Berners-Lee was asked by a member of the audience at the launch how negative behaviour on the internet could - and should - be tackled.

"That's a big question," replied Berners-Lee.

"At the highest level, you see [the internet is] humanity connected. And you see some wonderful things, and some ghastly things. The simplest way to look at it is to say, ‘That's what you get' - there are bad apples and some great apples, and you'll find those on the web, you'll find great information and stupid information.

"But then, when you look at it a bit less naively, and you look at, say, Twitter, there's been some serious issues with bullying."

Berners-Lee suggested a simple rethink in how social networks and human nature work together could help curtail negative behaviour.

"It's about building a social network and saying, ‘How's it going to work? If I can build a social network and people can inject ideas, what's going to happen to great ideas? If they take off and accelerate, will horrible ideas accelerate too?'

"I wonder about Twitter and the way it's made, and that people tend to retweet stuff that really gets them going, and that's not really great. A study showed that people are 10 times more likely to tweet something that made them angry than something that made them joyful.

"So I think we have responsibility to think how to build systems that tend to produce constructive criticism and harmony as opposed to negativity and bullying."