"I believe that facilitating the tussle, rather than overtly influenc[ing]  society, is the most appropriate role of standards." #readingToday  

What we can do, however, is provide the flexibility and precision in the protocol to allow this discussion, this push and pull amongst the stakeholders — end users, web servers and the networks in between them — to play out.

This is called "The tussle," an idea introduced in a seminal paper from 2005 [Tussle in Cyberspace]. I (and many others) believe that facilitating the tussle, rather than trying to overtly influence society, is the most appropriate role of standards (keeping in mind that as individuals, we can do things other than write standards!). On the Web, there are a number of places where we could do a better job at this.