Sir Tim Berners-Lee admits internet faults

Mea culpa. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the scientist credited with inventing the worldwide web, is alarmed that the internet has become a method of promoting alarm and disinformation.

Cults, he says, can spread "very rapidly" and the internet fosters conspiracy theories "which you can imagine spreading to thousands of people and being deeply damaging".

Internet coverage whipped up fears that the recent switching-on of the Large Hadron Collider would destroy the planet, says Sir Tim, and it was also responsible for exaggerating concern that the combined MMR vaccine put children at risk.

He says a new labelling system is needed and he has launched a new World Wide Web Foundation to take on the task. It will give websites a label for trustworthiness once they have been proved reliable sources.

He acknowledges the task will be complicated. "I'm not a fan of giving a website a simple number like an IQ rating because, like people, they can vary in all kinds of different ways," he says. "So I'd be interested in different organisations labelling websites in different ways."

The Foundation will also help promote access to the internet in developing countries. Only one-fifth of the world's population are currently able to use the internet regularly.

Sir Tim invented the web while working at the CERN particle physics laboratory in Switzerland 20 years ago and created the first website in 1991.