The affordances and risks on the internet today are the outcome of thirty years of laissez-faire communications policy. It shows that early internet evangelists in the 1990s believed that the internet could only thrive if application developers are free to innovate, unfettered by conventional legal duties and regulations. Their interventions were impactful enough that they inspired courts and legislators to articulate sweeping protections under the First Amendment and a new federal statute, 47 U.S.C. §230, respectively.

The ideas that motivated these protections have always been fanciful. In fact, they have driven information tech companies to design services without much regard for their social impacts; the protections give them license to pursue risky and harmful commercial practices. Now that the same discourse animates debates regarding artificial intelligence data centers, large language models, and AI-powered products, the book argues that lawmakers and judges should dispense with the breathless talk about innovation and free speech on online platforms and, instead, develop a new industrial tech policy that places consumers and communities at its center. They could start by focusing, as courts recently have, on the ways in which companies design their products and applications.

For more, visit the publisher’s website: https://globalreports.columbia.edu/books/reclaiming-the-internet

The Misinformation Speaker Series is co-sponsored by the Shorenstein Center for Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School and the Institute for Information, the Internet, and Democracy (IIID) at Northeastern University.