What is Web 2.9 ?

The Web 2.0, a term coined by Tim O'Reilly in 2005, is a next version of web, www or the Internet. The next version a.k.a 'Stage 2.0' of Internet since it was born or brought into this world by Tim Berners-Lee, who in 2018 in interactions with media personals said that he is "quite upset and concerned about the where his creation is taking the world as we know it today."

The earliest version of Web, when it was invented, can be referred as Web 1.0 -- the era of web when the users was consuming and only consuming the content and had no rights to create, engage or contribute in the digital world they see through their Web browsers.

The real Web 2.0 era came in 2005 when YouTube was launched as users become creators with uploading video content and allowing others to engage by watching, commenting and liking.

The 2.9 version was started to build up when Google bought it. "Why ?" of this will be discussed later.

Technically, Web 2.0 is next generation of Web where users can not only consume the content they see but can engage with it and can even create. Engaging in form of discussion forums and comments on blogs created by others. And, creation started with blogging followed by YouTube, which was the then-major example product of web 2.0.

The 2.9 is the next hypothetical version this www, where content becomes 9aid and manipulative. The content creation is being carried out to manipulate events like political elections, building public images of people & personalities, manipulating behaviors of users who are consuming this content, strategically created to infuse or trigger emotions like patriotism in order to deflect attention from primary issues of society, country or the world.

In simple words, Web 2.9 can be referred to Manipulative Web or Web with high disorder-ness.

In a real life example as how this disorder-ness can confuse & manipulate your thought patterns is -- when you "Google" you illness or disease you're suffering from and input your illness symptoms there's high probability that every-time do this it might end up with serious disease or even cancer.

Web 2.9 is a version in between Web 2.0 and latest Web 3.0, which would sustain itself in every future versions of web.

Though Web 3.0 again has its own anomalies and controversies.

💯 https://t.co/YaEO5tLlWl
— jack⚡️ (@jack) December 21, 2021

The Debut of Web 2.9

Facebook (pre GDPR ), can be a classic example of Web 2.9 between 2013 to 2016. In this, user-data is being gathered, with or without the consent of its consumers, to analyze the behavioral features or personality traits/features of its users so that a customized digital content can be served to either suppress or trigger a particular behavior and even emotions of users accordingly.

This year it was alleged that Facebook, in a bid to grow its user bases, is allowing the minors to sign up for the Instagram and for this minors need to agree to the permissions like adult users need to do, signing the same contract.

Almost every agreement made between a social media company and a minor/children is technically unenforceable — meaning all of the content Facebook is collecting from children is obtained unethically, if not illegally.

9aid Web

Photo by Mohammed Suhail from Pexels

In a developing country like India, its a new-normal too see hundreds of similar-tweets from different twitter accounts, targeted to either troll or favor an individual or brand [example]. Same texts but from hundreds of different accounts and questions arise as where these social media user accounts created for & from ? -- Some alleged that these are created by Paid IT-cells of propagandists while some are certain that these are just spammy internet bots.

That said, the 9aid manipulative content creation don't stop stop here. Comments section are flooded all over social media with curse words to target certain section/community or media banner or even an individual. Accounts are created to specifically use for this purpose and target, troll, or praise the "client" or "the victim".

YouTube uses its own algorithm infused with artificial intelligence and/or machine learning to show you videos based on your past videos you've watched, liked or made one or more comment into. For an instance, if you have watched horror videos much in a day then as you scroll down the video platform will predict and serve you more horror-related videos. Regardless of the fact that if the videos you're watching may or may not have psychological effect -- short or long term -- subjected to analysis.

Its not just Youtube though as in September this year, a report claimed that Facebook leadership was long known of the fact that its subsidiary Instagram was harmful to teenage girls’ mental health.

Fake News

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Ask yourself, who would have time to create misinformation and propagate it all over the internet and not caring about that "killing of time in this absurd way" wouldn't earn his/her living for bread-n-butter. A substantial part of this fake news stream comes from 9paid version of web, which (who) create these social media accounts, websites and even fund (directly or indirectly) start-up companies to establish their lies in an authentic way.

According MIT scientists, news that is likely to be false will spread more widely and travel deeper into the network than news with higher credibility -- quite an Irony.

Fake news gave a new industry vertical called "Fact Checking" websites and apps. From Google's own fact check tool to numerous other online entities launched solely for purpose to allow online users to check facts and identify fake news.

But this fact checking business has their own hidden purpose to exist, that will be discussed later in this post after sometime soon.