Sir Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web, believes the Internet needs a way to help users separate fact from fiction. Berners-Lee is establishing a foundation intended to find ways to rate websites according to their veracity. He also wants the web to become less US-centered and more international.

Berners-Lee spoke to the BBC in the wake of web rumors that the Large Hadron Collider at CERN might create world-destroying black holes. He also pointed to websites that claimed the MMR vaccine given to children in Britain was harmful. Both assertions are false. Berners-Lee and colleagues at the World Wide Web Consortium had looked at simple ways of branding websites, but concluded that a whole variety of different mechanisms was needed.

Currently, only 20% of the world’s population has web access, and Berners-Lee wants to change that. But he’s concerned the developing world may need a very different Internet than the one designed by Westerners. The web should be more mobile-phone friendly, Berners-Lee says, to help increase web use in Africa and other places that have few computers but many cell phones.

The new foundation will investigate if the Internet has become less democratic through the interference of large corporations. “It’s not just where I go to decide where to buy my shoes which is the commercial incentive -- it’s where I go to decide who I’m going to trust to vote,” he said. The 53-year-old Oxford graduate was listed by the Telegraph newspaper as number one on their list of the world’s “100 Greatest Living Geniuses.”

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