Kolbert’s “Who Owns the Internet” lays out the corrosive nature of Big Tech’s monopoly over power and culture in the modern era. She begins by stating that the media influencing national elections isn’t a new phenomenon. In 1876 the media was dominated by an elite few who controlled the flow of information. During the election that year when Hayes was running against Tilden, the western arm of the associated press under Henry Smith released scathing information about the Republican nominee as well as actively curtailed press releases to paint the democratic nominee in a positive light. While not new, Foer argues that this transgression of the media into democratic life is a lot easier to “fix an election these days than it was in 1876, and a lot harder for anyone to know about it”. During the 2016 elections a website called Departed was being run halfway across the world by a computer science student in Tbilisi looking to make a few extra bucks. While he began posting flattering stories about Hilary Clinton, he found that the fabricated pro-Trump stories which rode the wave of the President’s populist and demagogue image, produced much more revenue. The flow of information on the internet has very real and deep-rooted impacts on the outcomes of elections and on the choices that people make, and yet they have become as trivial as an afternoon pass time of a college student who’s low on funds.  

​

The dominance that these platforms hold not only allows for a deep impact on an election process through a swift algorithmic maneuver changing what people can and cannot see, but they can do so behind the guise of neutrality and communal support. When governmental agents and social activists proposed a bill that would hamper online piracy and protect artists' right to distribution and monetization of their art, Google posted on their search page “Tell Congress: please don’t censor the web!” Media platforms still gain support from the notion that they stand with collective power and freedom against forces that seek to oppose it. It's dangerous because it doesn't always work in favor of collective power, rather corporate interests of removing the cost of hiring content moderators that actively take down the constant barrage of illegal music and films on the web. These platforms have been described by Foer as  “the most imposing gatekeepers in human history” and rightfully so. They dominate the traffic of sales of goods and services worldwide, and thus set the ground rules and the barriers to entry. If Google comes up with a plan to scan pages of every book and place it on Google Books, refusal to participate by any writer or distributor would simply mean this book’s erasure from the public eye. In the same way, musicians have no choice but to subscribe to platforms such as spotify which deeply cut into their profits. 

​

If the internet has become overrun by these divisive forces, is there hope for their remedy? Zuckerman advances the need for the development of social media innovations that seek to shift from the current commercialization of social media and its disruptive profit models to one of public service digital media that seeks to promote the social good. He posits Wikipedia as an example of a self-sustaining platform that derives its revenue streams from donations of money and employee’s time in order to provide a public service of educating the masses. While it remains one of the most widely used pages on the internet, social media platforms with commercial interests dominate the internet and have geared social discourse towards polarization, radicalization, and misinformation as the profit structures of these platforms aim to capture attention, rather than develop communities. This primary purpose to secure engagement often leads to the spread of misinformation capable of eliciting stronger emotional reactions than true stories, as well as the develop recommendation algorithms that promote attention-grabbing content irrespective of its divisiveness or accuracy as the information. Public service digital media would aim to reimagine would we’re capable of achieving with the internet, whether that’s in amplifying marginalized voices or offering a space for constructive discussions surrounding local bills. This approach of establishing a presence of demonetized platforms would strengthen the quality of democracy in countries that have allowed these platforms to remain independent from government oversight. While skepticism has been raised over the viability of such platforms given their novelty in the face of a capitalist internet, dominated by corporate interests, their success is dependent on the societal awareness of the corrosive nature of these profit models on mental and social health. A societal awareness which I believe, with the help of academics, filmmakers, and social activists, is emerging in full force, thus growing the base of support for such platforms. 

​

Berners Lee, the creator of the internet, posits his own workable solution to this deviation from the original intention behind the construction of the internet, to serve humanity rather than move headfirst into what he calls a “digital dystopia”. While there exist projects which continue to champion the free spirit of the internet and its service to the vast collective, they are in the dwindling minority of platforms. His solution, the Contract for the Web, is a global action plan which on one hand provides the leading academic and civic understanding of the shortcomings of the current internet and the dynamics which it oversees, and on the other, workable solutions to be adopted by signatories and backers. It calls on governments to publish public data registries in an effort to make the data information economy transparent enough to allow citizens to protect themselves from breaches in their privacy. It also aims to tackle the spread of disinformation by establishing ways to improve system architecture. This contract takes into account the need to cater the internet to everyone and recognizes the need to consider systemic injustices that inequitably dispurses resources depending on race, sex, and religion when designing platforms.