Building Safety Into Digital Inclusion Efforts

Digital safety is a growing concern among experts and lawmakers, and among those surveyed for state digital equity planning efforts. Digital risk impacts everyone who interacts directly with internet-enabled devices as well as those exploited, marginalized, or surveilled by algorithmic and data-dependent systems. My latest research examines the tensions between the goals of:

1. Expanding universal broadband access, adoption, and use to provide equal digital opportunity for all, while protecting the free and open internet; and
2. Addressing the spread of fraud, cybercrime, and digital abuse, along with unchecked and unregulated expansion of inequitable application of surveillance, predictive algorithmic systems, and other risks and harms that accompany emerging technologies.

Fully addressing the spectrum of risks that accompany internet use will require a far broader effort than what is possible under the Digital Equity Act and the programs it supports. However, it is imperative that the current investments support safety for beneficiaries—and do not undercut or contradict efforts to reduce exposure to digital harms.