The Great War, Part 1: The Internet vs Democracy
This is the first part to a series of posts on this topic. Scroll to the end to find the most recent posts.
The first slice of the multi-dimensional war for the future of internet governance I will examine is best framed as “The Internet vs Democracy.” In this story, the terrifying villain is the business model of targeted advertising, enriched by decades of largely unchecked data collection and behavioral profiling. According to this narrative, the designers and abusers of these engines of manipulation keep us from realizing democratic free will. I sympathize on some level; I myself am fond of saying that for too long, the internet’s culture was “collect all the data, store all the data forever and then figure out how to monetize it later.” This treasure trove of data was a fruitful recipe for innovation, but the fruit has turned poisonous with growing public concern over privacy and lost agency. Unfortunately, the dominant rhetoric of today tends not to improve understanding of the underlying problems nor provide a path toward their resolution. Rather, we have seen the internet demonized and support for questionable policy proposals grow and spread. We need to break through the storytelling and see a little deeper to find a constructive path forward.