One thing I worry about a lot is that the rising pressure to “regulate tech” will cause policymakers to create over-broad legislation that doesn’t actually solve problems & instead hurts small companies, nonprofits, & open source/content projects.
There are very real problems with the current state of the internet, especially with the ways information is shared and data is collected. But we need carefully tailored regulations to solve these problems while still allowing for the good parts of the internet to fluorish.
Facebook isn’t Medium. Google isn’t Wikipedia. Twitter isn’t Github. We need legal and policy approaches that recognize these differences and protect the good things we get from both the smaller websites and the larger ones.
There’s also still a lot of good that can come from those big tech platforms. They’re what fueled the Arab Spring, #MeToo, & other political/social movements. Access to information & communication is crucial, esp for parts of the world where free speech is dangerous/difficult.
There are definitely problems (many, many problems). Harassment. Revenge porn. Media manipulation. Election interference. We need to solve for those problems, and laws can provide solutions. But we need to make sure those laws protect the good parts of the internet too.
Thinking about these issues is literally my job, and I have quite a lot of thoughts. But I am always learning and would *love* to hear more from anyone who has ideas on how to create laws that solve internet problems but also protect internet freedoms.
![“We are compelled by our mission [to] provide information to everyone, and [China is] 20 percent of the world's population.”](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dpopvc_WsAEh4LW.jpg)
