Internet for the People - The Fight for Our Digital Future - Grand Format

The Internet is broken, not because the giant online platforms are too big but because they are private firms run for profit. The reason Google annihilates your privacy and Facebook amplifies right-wing propaganda is that it is profitable to do so. But the Internet was not always like this. Ben Tarnoff tells the story of the privatization that made the modern internet, and why it resulted in the crises that consume it today.
The internet was remade for the purpose of profit maximization, which turned a small research network into a powerhouse of global capitalism. What can be done to reclaim it ? Internet for the People is a rallying cry for a new, democratic Internet. How we get out of the crisis is straightforward : deprivatize the network. This means creating an Internet where people, and not profits, rule. It calls for abolishing the platforms that run so much of our online lives, such as Google, Uber, Facebook, and the other tech giants, while developing publicly and cooperatively owned alternatives that encode real democratic control.
To build a better internet, we need to change how it is owned and organized. Not with an eye towards making markets work better, but towards making them less dominant. Not in order to create a more competitive or more rule-bound version of privatization, but to overturn it. It is time to demand an internet by, and for, the people.