Please Let the Internet Die

Online spaces are captured by oligarchs and saturated with slop—and they’re exacerbating humanity’s worst impulses. It’s time to start over.

(please don't) add me to the group

We talk a lot about how broken the internet is for all of us as individuals. Doomscrolling, algorithmic feeds, overall exhaustion at The Horrors. But this...

Kill The Internet IRL in Austin TX

A night of philosophizing in the digital age of chaos and decay. Discussions with three online public philosophers on technology, privacy, and the state of our internet enmeshed civilization.The D...

The Boring Internet

The internet you grew up on isn't dying. A commercial veneer glued on top of it is.

The Boring Internet

The internet you grew up on isn't dying. A commercial veneer glued on top of it is.

My journey to the heart of the forgotten internet

Slowly but surely, huge swaths of the internet are vanishing. But the artefacts of the early web are still out there, and they have lessons for the future.

The Internet Is Making You Less Free

Our current age is defined by the internet. The internet—a technology that allows the decentralized, globalized dissemination of information—has become so

Lisa Nakamura: The internet is a trash fire. Here's how to fix it.

Life on the internet is real life, and we need to stop pretending that what happens online doesn't matter, says digital media researcher Lisa Nakamura. In this timely talk, she explains the steps we can take to correct the toxic behaviors that have become common online -- and help make the internet a place where we all feel safe.

Tim Berners Lee: Thoughts On The Internet Evolution

"I’ve always believed the web is for everyone. That's why I and others fight fiercely to protect it."

Doomscrolling

Doomscrolling is the act of spending an excessive amount of time on digital content that elicit negative emotions. The concept was coined around 2018, and became more widespread in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The World Health Organization (WHO) observed that the pandemic was accompanied by widespread misleading information, conspiracy theories, and false reports, which it referred to as an "infodemic".

Opinion: We Built A Broken Internet. Now We Need To Burn It To The Ground.

In an edited extract from his upcoming book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PS16XY9/" target="_blank">Ruined by Design</a>, Silicon Valley veteran Mike Monteiro explains how designers destroyed the world.

The Internet Is About to Get Weird Again

The internet seems ripe for change, and millions of people seem poised to connect in new ways, as they reconsider their relationship to technology.

Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future

"For all the informational convenience the internet offers, it is deeply flawed. How can it be improved? Writer Ben Tarnoff proposes one possibility in this intriguing book, which urges the development of 'a public lane on the information superhighway.' It's worth checking out for yourself." – Seth MacFarlane Why is the internet so broken, and what could ever possibly fix it? In Internet for the People, leading tech writer Ben Tarnoff offers an answer. The internet is broken, he argues, because it is owned by private firms and run for profit. Google annihilates your privacy and Facebook amplifies right-wing propaganda because it is profitable to do so. But the internet wasn't always like this—it had to be remade for the purposes of profit maximization, through a years-long process of privatization that turned a small research network into a powerhouse of global capitalism. Tarnoff tells the story of the privatization that made the modern internet, and which set in motion the crises that consume it today. The solution to those crises is straightforward: deprivatize the internet. Deprivatization aims at creating an internet where people, and not profit, rule. It calls for shrinking the space of the market and diminishing the power of the profit motive. It calls for abolishing the walled gardens of Google, Facebook, and the other giants that dominate our digital lives and developing publicly and cooperatively owned alternatives that encode real democratic control. To build a better internet, we need to change how it is owned and organized. Not with an eye towards making markets work better, but towards making them less dominant. Not in order to create a more competitive or more rule-bound version of privatization, but to overturn it. Otherwise, a small number of executives and investors will continue to make choices on everyone’s behalf, and these choices will remain tightly bound by the demands of the market. It's time to demand an internet by, and for, the people now.

Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future

"For all the informational convenience the internet offers, it is deeply flawed. How can it be improved? Writer Ben Tarnoff proposes one possibility in this intriguing book, which urges the development of 'a public lane on the information superhighway.' It's worth checking out for yourself." – Seth MacFarlane Why is the internet so broken, and what could ever possibly fix it? In Internet for the People, leading tech writer Ben Tarnoff offers an answer. The internet is broken, he argues, because it is owned by private firms and run for profit. Google annihilates your privacy and Facebook amplifies right-wing propaganda because it is profitable to do so. But the internet wasn't always like this—it had to be remade for the purposes of profit maximization, through a years-long process of privatization that turned a small research network into a powerhouse of global capitalism. Tarnoff tells the story of the privatization that made the modern internet, and which set in motion the crises that consume it today. The solution to those crises is straightforward: deprivatize the internet. Deprivatization aims at creating an internet where people, and not profit, rule. It calls for shrinking the space of the market and diminishing the power of the profit motive. It calls for abolishing the walled gardens of Google, Facebook, and the other giants that dominate our digital lives and developing publicly and cooperatively owned alternatives that encode real democratic control. To build a better internet, we need to change how it is owned and organized. Not with an eye towards making markets work better, but towards making them less dominant. Not in order to create a more competitive or more rule-bound version of privatization, but to overturn it. Otherwise, a small number of executives and investors will continue to make choices on everyone’s behalf, and these choices will remain tightly bound by the demands of the market. It's time to demand an internet by, and for, the people now.

The Next Great (Digital) Extinction

How today's internet is rapidly and indifferently killing off many systems while allowing new types of organizations to emerge.