How to Fix the Internet

From Napster to YouTube, some of the most important and controversial uses of the internet have been about building community: connecting people all over the world who share similar interests, tastes, views, and concerns. Big corporations try to co-opt and control these communities, and politicians often promote scary narratives about technology’s dangerous influences, but users have pushed back against monopoly and rhetoric to find new ways to connect with each other. 

Alex Winter is a leading documentarian of the evolution of internet communities. He joins EFF’s Cindy Cohn and Jason Kelley to discuss the harms of behavioral advertising, what algorithms can and can’t be blamed for, and promoting the kind of digital literacy that can bring about a better internet—and a better world—for all of us. 

In this episode you’ll learn about: 

• Debunking the monopolistic myth that communicating and sharing data is theft. 
• Demystifying artificial intelligence so that it’s no longer a “black box” impervious to improvement. 
• Decentralizing and democratizing the internet so more, diverse people can push technology, online communities, and our world forward. 
• Finding a nuanced balance between free speech and harm mitigation in social media. 
• Breaking corporations’ addiction to advertising revenue derived from promoting disinformation. 

Alex Winter is a director, writer and actor who has worked across film, television and theater. Perhaps best known on screen for “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” (1989) and its sequels as well as “The Lost Boys” (1987), “Destroy All Neighbors” (2024) and other films, he has directed documentaries including “Downloaded” (2013) about the Napster revolution; “Deep Web” (2015) about the online black market Silk Road and the trial of its creator Ross Ulbricht; “Trust Machine” (2018) about the rise of bitcoin and the blockchain; and “The YouTube Effect” (2022). He also has directed critically acclaimed documentaries about musician Frank Zappa and about the Panama Papers, the biggest global corruption scandal in history and the journalists who worked in secret and at great risk to break the story.   

Music credits:

Perspectives *** by J.Lang (c) copyright 2019 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. Ft: Sackjo22 and Admiral Bob

Blind and low-vision people have experienced remarkable gains in information literacy because of digital technologies, like being able to access an online library offering more than 1.2 million books that can be translated into text-to-speech or digital Braille. But it can be a lot harder to come by an accessible map of a neighborhood they want to visit, or any simple diagram, due to limited availability of tactile graphics equipment, design inaccessibility, and publishing practices. 

Chancey Fleet wants a technological future that’s more organically attuned to people’s needs, which requires including people with disabilities in every step of the development and deployment process. She speaks with EFF’s Cindy Cohn and Jason Kelley about building an internet that’s just and useful for all, and why this must include giving blind and low-vision people the discretion to decide when and how to engage artificial intelligence tools to solve accessibility problems and surmount barriers. 

In this episode you’ll learn about: 

• The importance of creating an internet that’s not text-only, but that incorporates tactile images and other technology to give everyone a richer, more fulfilling experience. 
• Why AI-powered visual description apps still need human auditing. 
• How inclusiveness in tech development is always a work in progress. 
• Why we must prepare people with the self-confidence, literacy, and low-tech skills they need to get everything they can out of even the most optimally designed technology. 
• Making it easier for everyone to travel the two-way street between enjoyment and productivity online. 

Chancey Fleet’s writing, organizing and advocacy explores how cloud-connected accessibility tools benefit and harm, empower and expose communities of disability. She is the Assistive Technology Coordinator at the New York Public Library’s Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library, where she founded and maintains the Dimensions Project, a free open lab for the exploration and creation of accessible images, models and data representations through tactile graphics, 3D models and nonvisual approaches to coding, CAD and “visual” arts. She is a former fellow and current affiliate-in-residence at Data & Society; she is president of the National Federation of the Blind’s Assistive Technology Trainers Division; and she was recognized as a 2017 Library Journal Mover and Shaker. 

Music credits:

Probably Shouldn't by J.Lang (c) copyright 2019 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. Ft: Mr_Yesterday

commonGround by airtone (c) copyright 2018 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial  (3.0) license.

Klaus by Skill_Borrower (c) copyright 2013 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. Ft: Klaus_Neumaier

Chrome Cactus by Martijn de Boer (NiGiD) (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial  (3.0) license. Ft: Javolenus

If you buy something—a refrigerator, a car, a tractor, a wheelchair, or a phone—but you can't have the information or parts to fix or modify it, is it really yours? The right to repair movement is based on the belief that you should have the right to use and fix your stuff as you see fit, a philosophy that resonates especially in economically trying times, when people can’t afford to just throw away and replace things.  

Companies for decades have been tightening their stranglehold on the information and the parts that let owners or independent repair shops fix things, but the pendulum is starting to swing back: New York, Minnesota, California, and Colorado have passed right to repair laws, and it’s on the legislative agenda in dozens of other states. Gay Gordon-Byrne is executive director of The Repair Association, one of the major forces pushing for more and stronger state laws, and for federal reforms as well. She joins EFF’s Cindy Cohn and Jason Kelley to discuss this pivotal moment in the fight for consumers to have the right to products that are repairable and reusable.  

In this episode you’ll learn about: 

• Why our “planned obsolescence” throwaway culture doesn’t have to be, and shouldn’t be, a technology status quo. 
• The harm done by “parts pairing:” software barriers used by manufacturers to keep people from installing replacement parts. 
• Why one major manufacturer put out a user manual in France, but not in other countries including the United States. 
• How expanded right to repair protections could bring a flood of new local small-business jobs while reducing waste. 
• The power of uniting disparate voices—farmers, drivers, consumers, hackers, and tinkerers—into a single chorus that can’t be ignored. 

Gay Gordon-Byrne has been executive director of The Repair Association—formerly known as The Digital Right to Repair Coalition—since its founding in 2013, helping lead the fight for the right to repair in Congress and state legislatures. Their credo: If you bought it, you should own it and have the right to use it, modify it, and repair it whenever, wherever, and however you want. Earlier, she had a 40-year career as a vendor, lessor, and used equipment dealer for large commercial IT users; she is the author of "Buying, Supporting and Maintaining Software and Equipment - an IT Manager's Guide to Controlling the Product Lifecycle” (2014), and a Colgate University alumna. 

MUSIC CREDITS

Come Inside by Zep Hurme (c) copyright 2019 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. Ft: snowflake

Drops of H2O ( The Filtered Water Treatment ) by J.Lang (c) copyright 2012 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. Ft: Airtone

Imagine an internet in which economic power is more broadly distributed, so that more people can build and maintain small businesses online to make good livings. In this world, the behavioral advertising that has made the internet into a giant surveillance tool would be banned, so people could share more equally in the riches without surrendering their privacy. 

That’s the world Tim Wu envisions as he teaches and shapes policy on the revitalization of American antitrust law and the growing power of big tech platforms. He joins EFF’s Cindy Cohn and Jason Kelley to discuss using the law to counterbalance the market’s worst instincts, in order to create an internet focused more on improving people’s lives than on meaningless revenue generation. 

In this episode you’ll learn about: 

• Getting a better “deal” in trading some of your data for connectedness. 
• Building corporate structures that do a better job of balancing the public good with private profits. 
• Creating a healthier online ecosystem with corporate “quarantines” to prevent a handful of gigantic companies from dominating the entire internet. 
• Nurturing actual innovation of products and services online, not just newer price models. 

Timothy Wu is the Julius Silver Professor of Law, Science and Technology at Columbia Law School, where he has served on the faculty since 2006. First known for coining the term “net neutrality” in 2002, he served in President Joe Biden’s White House as special assistant to the President for technology and competition policy from 2021 to 2023; he also had worked on competition policy for the National Economic Council during the last year of President Barack Obama’s administration. Earlier, he worked in antitrust enforcement at the Federal Trade Commission and served as enforcement counsel in the New York Attorney General’s Office. His books include “The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age” (2018), "The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads” (2016), “The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires” (2010), and “Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World” (2006). 

MUSIC CREDITS

Perspectives *** by J.Lang (c) copyright 2019 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. Ft: Sackjo22 and Admiral Bob

_________________

Warm Vacuum Tube  by Admiral Bob (c) copyright 2019 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. Ft: starfrosch

Is your face truly your own, or is it a commodity to be sold, a weapon to be used against you? A company called Clearview AI has scraped the internet to gather (without consent) 30 billion images to support a tool that lets users identify people by picture alone. Though it’s primarily used by law enforcement, should we have to worry that the eavesdropper at the next restaurant table, or the creep who’s bothering you in the bar, or the protestor outside the abortion clinic can surreptitiously snap a pic of you, upload it, and use it to identify you, where you live and work, your social media accounts, and more? 

New York Times reporter Kashmir Hill has been writing about the intersection of privacy and technology for well over a decade; her book about Clearview AI’s rise and practices was published last fall. She speaks with EFF’s Cindy Cohn and Jason Kelley about how face recognition technology’s rapid evolution may have outpaced ethics and regulations, and where we might go from here. 

In this episode, you’ll learn about: 

• The difficulty of anticipating how information that you freely share might be used against you as technology advances. 
• How the all-consuming pursuit of “technical sweetness” — the alluring sensation of neatly and functionally solving a puzzle — can blind tech developers to the implications of that tech’s use. 
• The racial biases that were built into many face recognition technologies.  
• How one state's 2008 law has effectively curbed how face recognition technology is used there, perhaps creating a model for other states or Congress to follow. 

Kashmir Hill is a New York Times tech reporter who writes about the unexpected and sometimes ominous ways technology is changing our lives, particularly when it comes to our privacy. Her book, “Your Face Belongs To Us” (2023), details how Clearview AI gave facial recognition to law enforcement, billionaires, and businesses, threatening to end privacy as we know it. She joined The Times in 2019 after having worked at Gizmodo Media Group, Fusion, Forbes Magazine and Above the Law. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker and The Washington Post. She has degrees from Duke University and New York University, where she studied journalism. 

This podcast is licensed Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, and includes music licensed Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported by their creators. This episode features:

• Kalte Ohren by Alex (c) copyright 2019 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. Ft: starfrosch & Jerry Spoon
• Drops of H2O (The Filtered Water Treatment ) by J.Lang (c) copyright 2012 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. Ft: Airtone

Imagine a world in which the internet is first and foremost about empowering people, not big corporations and government. In that world, government does “after-action” analyses to make sure its tech regulations are working as intended, recruits experienced technologists as advisors, and enforces real accountability for intelligence and law enforcement programs. 

Ron Wyden has spent decades working toward that world, first as a congressman and now as Oregon’s senior U.S. Senator. Long among Congress’ most tech-savvy lawmakers, he helped write the law that shaped and protects the internet as we know it, and he has fought tirelessly against warrantless surveillance of Americans’ telecommunications data. Wyden speaks with EFF’s Cindy Cohn and Jason Kelley about his “I squared” —individuals and innovation—legislative approach to foster an internet that benefits everyone. 

In this episode you’ll learn about: 

• How a lot of the worrisome online content that critics blame on Section 230 is actually protected by the First Amendment 
• Requiring intelligence and law enforcement agencies to get warrants before obtaining Americans’ private telecommunications data 
• Why “foreign” is the most important word in “Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act” 
• Making government officials understand national security isn’t heightened by reducing privacy 
• Protecting women from having their personal data weaponized against them 

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-OR, has served in the Senate since 1996; he was elected to his current six-year term in 2022. He chairs the Senate Finance Committee, and serves on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the Budget Committee, and the Select Committee on Intelligence; he also is the lead Senate Democrat on the Joint Committee on Taxation. His relentless defiance of the national security community's abuse of secrecy forced the declassification of the CIA Inspector General's 9/11 report, shut down the controversial Total Information Awareness program, and put a spotlight on both the Bush and Obama administrations’ reliance on "secret law." In 2006 he introduced the first Senate bill on net neutrality, and in 2011 he was the lone Senator to stand against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), ultimately unsuccessful bills that purportedly were aimed at fighting online piracy but that actually would have caused significant harm to the internet. Earlier, he served from 1981 to 1996 in the House of Representatives, where he co-authored Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 —the law that protects Americans’ freedom of expression online by protecting the intermediaries we all rely on.

What if we thought about democracy as a kind of open-source social technology, in which everyone can see the how and why of policy making, and everyone’s concerns and preferences are elicited in a way that respects each person’s community, dignity, and importance? 

This is what Audrey Tang has worked toward as Taiwan’s first Digital Minister, a position the free software programmer has held since 2016. She has taken the best of open source and open culture and successfully used them to help reform her country’s government. Tang speaks with EFF’s Cindy Cohn and Jason Kelley about how Taiwan has shown that openness not only works but can outshine more authoritarian competition, wherein governments often lock up data. 

In this episode you’ll learn about: 

• Using technology including artificial intelligence to help surface our areas of agreement, rather than to identify and exacerbate our differences 
• The “radical transparency” of recording and making public every meeting in which a government official takes part, to shed light on the policy-making process 
• How Taiwan worked with civil society to ensure that no privacy and human rights were traded away for public health and safety during the COVID-19 pandemic 
• Why maintaining credible neutrality from partisan politics and developing strong public and civic digital infrastructure are key to advancing democracy. 

Audrey Tang has served as Taiwan's first  Digital Minister since 2016, by which time she already was known for revitalizing the computer languages Perl and Haskell, as well as for building the online spreadsheet system  EtherCalc in collaboration with Dan Bricklin. In the public sector, she served on the Taiwan National Development Council’s open data committee and basic education curriculum committee and led the country’s first e-Rulemaking project. In the private sector, she worked as a consultant with Apple on computational linguistics, with Oxford University Press on crowd lexicography, and with Socialtext on social interaction design. In the social sector, she actively contributes to g0v (“gov zero”), a vibrant community focusing on creating tools for the civil society, with the call to “fork the government.”

We cannot build a better future unless we can envision it. EFF’s How to Fix the Internet returns with another season full of inspiring conversations with some of the smartest and most interesting people around who are thinking about how to make the internet – and the world – a better place for all of us. Co-hosts Executive Director Cindy Cohn and Activism Director Jason Kelley will speak with people like journalist Kashmir Hill, Taiwan’s minister of digital affairs Audrey Tang, former White House advisor Tim Wu, digital artist Dr. Nettrice Gaskins and actor and filmmaker Alex Winter, among others.

It seems like everywhere we turn we see dystopian stories about technology’s impact on our lives and our futures — from tracking-based surveillance capitalism to street level government surveillance to the dominance of a few large platforms choking innovation to the growing pressure by authoritarian governments to control what we see and say — the landscape can feel bleak. Exposing and articulating these problems is important, but so is envisioning and then building a better future. That’s where our podcast comes in.

EFF's How to Fix the Internet podcast offers a better way forward. Through curious conversations with some of the leading minds in law and technology, we explore creative solutions to some of today’s biggest tech challenges.

This episode was first published on May 24, 2022.

Pam Smith has been working to secure US elections for years, and now as the CEO of Verified Voting, she has some important ideas about the role the internet plays in American democracy. Pam joins Cindy and Danny to explain how elections can be more transparent and more engaging for all.

U.S. democracy is at an inflection point, and how we administer and verify our elections is more important than ever. From hanging chads to glitchy touchscreens to partisan disinformation, too many Americans worry that their votes won’t count and that election results aren’t trustworthy. It’s crucial that citizens have well-justified confidence in this pillar of our republic.

Technology can provide answers - but that doesn’t mean moving elections online. As president and CEO of the nonpartisan nonprofit Verified Voting, Pamela Smith helps lead the national fight to balance ballot accessibility with ballot security by advocating for paper trails, audits, and transparency wherever and however Americans cast votes.

On this episode of How to Fix the Internet, Pamela Smith joins EFF’s Cindy Cohn and Danny O’Brien to discuss hope for the future of democracy and the technology and best practices that will get us there.

In this episode you’ll learn about:

• Why voting online can never be like banking or shopping online
• What a “risk-limiting audit” is, and why no election should lack it 
• Whether open-source software could be part of securing our votes
• Where to find reliable information about how your elections are conducted

Pamela Smith, President & CEO of Verified Voting, plays a national leadership role in safeguarding elections and building working alliances between advocates, election officials, and other stakeholders. Pam joined Verified Voting in 2004, and previously served as President from 2007-2017. She is a member of the National Task Force on Election Crises, a diverse cross-partisan group of more than 50 experts whose mission is to prevent and mitigate election crises by urging critical reforms. She provides information and public testimony on election security issues across the nation, including to Congress. Before her work in elections, she was a nonprofit executive for a Hispanic educational organization working on first language literacy and adult learning, and a small business and marketing consultant.

This podcast is supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's Program in Public Understanding of Science and Technology.

Music for How to Fix the Internet was created for us by Reed Mathis and Nat Keefe of BeatMower. 

This podcast is licensed Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, and includes the following music licensed Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported by their creators: 

http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/Skill_Borrower/41751

Klaus by Skill_Borrower (c) copyright 2013 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license

— 

http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/airtone/58703

commonGround by airtone (c) copyright 2018 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial  (3.0) license. 

—

http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/NiGiD/62475

Chrome Cactus by Martijn de Boer (NiGiD) (c) copyright 2020 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial  (3.0) license.