The Internet Has Become Too American to Trust | The Walrus

The Enshittification of American Power

First Google and Facebook, then the world. Under Trump 2.0, US statecraft is starting to mimic the worst tendencies of Big Tech.

Dan Shipper 📧 on Twitter / X

The smallest technical decisions become humanity's biggest pivots:The same-origin policy—a well-intentioned browser security rule from the 1990s—accidentally created Facebook, Google, and every data monopoly since. It locks your data in silos—and you stayed where your stuff… pic.twitter.com/G87qsuPHxN— Dan Shipper 📧 (@danshipper) July 9, 2025

An Attack on Tech Freedom, an Assault on Dissent

We live in a world of surveillance states, militarized police, and crackdowns on dissent. Meanwhile, corporate behemoths will often ally with the state to shut down dissident speech or aid and abet surveillance.  In this context, it’s important for independent groups to develop and maintain encrypted communications platforms and independent web hosting. But the Trump...

Pluralistic: Post-American compute for a post-American Internet (04 Aug 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Obviously, the non-American world has a digital sovereignty problem – Trump has means, motive and opportunity to order his tech companies to shut down any public official, large corporation, or individual who displeases him:

Revealed: Google facilitated Russia and China’s censorship requests

An investigation has exposed the tech firm’s cooperation with autocratic regimes to remove unfavourable content

Long Live the Web: A Call for Continued Open Standards and Neutrality

The Web is critical not merely to the digital revolution but to our continued prosperity—and even our liberty. Like democracy itself, it needs defending

China’s scary lesson to the world: Censoring the Internet works

China is confidently promoting its vision of “Internet Sovereignty.”

Big Tech tried to get young people addicted. Now we’re fighting back

Two seismic court decisions in the US have intervened where legislators have failed to defend social media users from exploitation, writes campaigner Zamaan Qureshi

The Missing Building Blocks of the Web

At a time when millions are losing trust in the the web’s biggest sites, it’s worth revisiting the idea that the web was supposed to be…

The Internet Coup: A Technical Analysis on How a Chinese Company is Exporting The Great Firewall to Autocratic Regimes | InterSecLab

This research reveals groundbreaking findings on how Geedge Networks is selling an extensive suite of next-generation digital repression tools to client governments around the world.

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.

We need to protect the protocol that runs Bluesky

If we don’t act soon, our online world will continue to be run at the whim of capricious billionaires.

The web can be weaponised – and we can't count on big tech to stop it | Tim Berners-Lee

It’s dangerous having a handful of companies control how ideas and opinions are shared. A regulator may be needed

How to Avoid US-Based Digital Services—and Why You Might Want To

Amid growing concerns over Big Tech firms aligning with Trump administration policies, people are starting to move their digital lives to services based overseas. Here's what you need to know.