The long read: How technology is making our minds redundant
The state has lost control: tech firms now run western politics
Democracy is under threat from rising inequality and terrorism. Google and Facebook have taken over
'It's digital colonialism': how Facebook's free internet service has failed its users
Free Basics, built for developing markets, focuses on ‘western corporate content’ and violates net neutrality principles, researchers say
Facebook Is Being Overrun With Stolen, AI-Generated Images That People Think Are Real
The once-prophesized future where cheap, AI-generated trash content floods out the hard work of real humans is already here, and is already taking over Facebook.
Tech and Liberty
The First Amendment is not about a law, but rather a culture — specifically a culture of liberty. It is essential to tech, and in this context, Facebook is mostly right about political ads (but can…
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
'Our minds can be hijacked': the tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia
The Google, Apple and Facebook workers who helped make technology so addictive are disconnecting themselves from the internet. Paul Lewis reports on the Silicon Valley refuseniks who worry the race for human attention has created a world of perpetual distraction that could ultimately end in disaster
Want a Glimpse of Facebook’s Soul in 2019? Look at Its Internal Propaganda Lab.
The Analog Research Lab has evolved its messaging, from ‘be the nerd’ to ‘what matters is what you do next.’ Yet it remains a mirror…
Dec 2020 -- Jelle Bruineberg -- Embodied cognition and the attention crisis
Why we must reclaim digital sovereignty
A new white paper envisions a radically different technological future
Social Media Should Be Public Infrastructure (with Ben Cerveny)
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 Sovereign Protocol War
How Facebook, Telegram and startups… may defend us and support the open web instead
Kill the Internet | The Paper Pilot
The Paper Pilot's digital garden of thoughts on philosophy, politics, and sociology
Paul Ford: Facebook Is Why We Need a Digital Protection Agency
It’s time for a digital protection agency. It’s clear ethics don’t scale, and it’s not just Facebook’s problem.
Holding Platforms Accountable Is Not Enough. We Need A ‘Compass’ For Social Technologies
This is the first series in the 21-22 Perspectives on Public Purpose blog.
