Another Internet Is Possible—If You Believe It Is

David Elliot Berman is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Media, Inequality and Change Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Victor Pickard is the C. Edwin Baker Professor of Media Policy and Political Economy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, where he co-directs the Media, Inequality & Change (MIC) Center. The Spirit, Detroit, Michigan mural by Waleed Johnson, 2021. Source The internet is facing multiple crises. From algorithmically fueled misinformation on Facebook to communities abandoned by large internet service providers, the tension between digital monopolies’ profit interests and the public interest is glaringly evident. Consensus is growing that the internet we have is not the internet that we want or need. In recent years, a diverse array of thinkers has begun to coalesce around bold ideas for radically democratizing the internet—from the pipes that connect us to the internet to the platforms that distribute news and information. The Media, Inequality and Change Center recently brought together some of these scholars and activists to consider a key question: What does an internet for the people look like? Central to reimagining a more democratic and just digital world is an honest grappling with the limitations of a hyper-capitalist internet that is saturated by market logics, from targeted advertising to digital redlining. Such an appraisal should force us to ask: How can we take the internet out of the market? How can we decommodify, deprivatize, de-commercialize what has been thoroughly naturalized as a commercial space? And can we envision a…Another Internet Is Possible—If You Believe It Is