Another Internet Is Possible—If You Believe It Is

The internet is facing multiple crises. From algorithmically fueled misinformation on Facebook to communities abandoned by large internet service providers, the tension between digital monopolies’ profit interests and the public interest is glaringly evident. Consensus is growing that the internet we have is not the internet that we want or need. In recent years, a diverse array of thinkers has begun to coalesce around bold ideas for radically democratizing the internet—from the pipes that connect us to the internet to the platforms that distribute news and information. There are two main schools of criticism as it relates to the modern internet:

• The Dominant Paradigm: The Tinkerers and Tweakers. The dominant paradigm of internet criticism is premised on the proposition that while the profit interests of corporations and the public’s interests are not always aligned, they can be reconciled through enlightened, discerning public policy. Adherents of the dominant paradigm seek not to slay the digital giants, but to tame their worst impulses. What the dominant paradigm of tech criticism ultimately suggests is that we can reform the internet from within the coordinates of our current profit-driven internet system—that we can tinker and tweak our way out of the structural crises plaguing our information and communication systems. 
• The Democratizers: Building a New Internet in the Shell of the Old. This cohort of thinkers relates the manifold maladies that plague the contemporary Internet to its underlying political economy. In this view, there is a structural antagonism between the owners of the Internet and its users, between the profit interests of digital monopolists and the public’s interest in an open, empowering Internet. In other words: we can have an internet that works for Silicon Valley and telecom companies, or we can have an internet that works for the people. But we cannot have both. The failure of the digital goliaths to serve any semblance of democracy has inspired numerous attempts to create a more democratic, egalitarian internet.