Commentary - Many Bad Laws are a Symptom of Bad Internet Social Policy

Throughout much of the history of the Internet, there have been ongoing efforts by legislators to pass laws that ultimately harm the Internet and everyone on it. Frequently, the first response is to point the fingers at the legislators for being evil authoritarians. However, I think we as an Internet community haven't been doing enough to address the root problems that solicit these proposals in the first place.

For decades now, I feel the Internet has been built into something that is purely for gratification for which which everything is voluntary, people have no obligations, don't have consequences for the way they act and, don't have to pay any social debts they don't want to pay and don't have to think about anything they don't want to think about. It's been something of a perpetual party where all that matters is what you want.

A social space without accountability isn't a healthy space, but it's what the Internet has been defined as. Every time the topic of crime and abuse comes up, there is a sense of paralysis because everything involved in dealing with it seems too far a stretch and incompatible with what has been built. People make every excuse in the book and beyond as to why nothing can be done. People even bury the topic deep in non-practical academic theory, claiming business makes it impossible, or genies are out of the bottle or that somehow any rule is authoritarianism. People stipulate that every response other than to put the onus upon victims to defend themselves is wrong. Of course that too is wrong because it hurts the victims more.

The outcome is that much of the Internet has given governments, especially the real authoritarians mountains of evidence of unaddressed abuse, everything they need to prove that the Internet's proponents — us, are dangerous and creating a threat to society that needs their absolute, nonyielding control. Even worse, we're losing public support because a lot of Internet freedoms activists have come to look no better than sovereign citizens.

These assaults will only continue and amplify as time goes on, chipping away at the Internet until there's nothing recognizable left. I feel we as the Internet's proponents need to start building proof, actual hard proof that the Internet can police itself, or government will take it out of our hands. There is no other option.

This goes beyond just how we're moderating stuff. This includes confronting the social, technical and business structures that empowers criminals while dis-empowering victims. For instance:

• Tech companies have built platforms that are too big to be safe, while abusing monopoly positions to destroy smaller, safer peer-run communities in turn forcing potential victims closer to perpetrators in unmoderated environments.
• Data broker and background check services collect massive amounts of information and compile it into online databases that make it far too easy for stalkers to find victims.
• Tech companies build platforms that use user engagement algorithms that promote socially problematic content because it is what gets the most clicks. These algorithms only encourage the worst in behaviours.
• A lot of developers move fast and break things, recklessly letting genies out of bottles that has a net effect of creating turmoil in society and enabling abuse to surge around technologies that yet have no ethical code around their use.
• In order to save on costs, ISPs and hosting companies often have no effective abuse departments. Further, poeople are also discouraged from reporting abuse by ISPs who pass the identity of the reporter onto potential criminals.

Ultimately, we should be working to pay the social debts of the Internet before governments come knocking. Unfortunately they are already knocking and the Internet's house is dirty as ever.