Smartphone users in emerging markets deserve better than a watered-down Internet

[Commentary] We’ve grown accustomed to the Web as a sprawling and open place. It’s a public resource that creates economic opportunity and celebrates diversity of opinion. But this open Web -- the one many of us first experienced on our desktops -- is in danger. As more people migrate to smartphones, they’re discovering a closed Web. The mobile Web is too often a series of walled gardens, closed platforms, and apps that limit creativity. This Web renders users as only consumers, not creators, and can threaten the basic tenets of network neutrality.

Simply lamenting the rise of a closed mobile Web won’t reverse the trend. If we want to empower billions of Web users and defend openness, we need to pursue two key solutions: equal-rating and web literacy education. We need a collection of companies, campaigns and curricula that genuinely invest in the right kind of access, in education, in openness and imagination. We need more players to join this crusade, or we won’t see the open Web people want.

[Mark Surman is executive director of the Mozilla Foundation]