Preparing for a More Fractured Web The central services under siege built global-scale networks. If policy trends hold, what comes next? Andrea O’Sullivan hat’s your worry about Silicon ad-based business model supporting much Valley? Most everyone has one. of big tech. Maybe you’re concerned about For some, it allows impolitic privacy. It could be a combination of many Wspeech to flourish online. If you’re like things. Whatever your persuasion, there me, you’re more bothered by the threat of is usually some good reason to resist big targeted content controls. Or you might American technology companies. fear that some companies have just gotten This essay will not debate the merits or a little too big. Maybe you dislike the entire demerits of any particular tech criticism. The JOURNAL of The JAMES MADISON INSTITUTE Readers can find many such commentaries These trends herald a future where data tailored to their own liking elsewhere on localization, which limits how information the world wide web. Instead, I will discuss can be used across borders, is the norm.5 how the many forces converging against Regulating data means regulating American technology companies may result commerce. Although framed as a way in a new web that is less, well, worldwide. to bring tech companies in line, data What might such an internet look like? regulations affect anyone who engages in We already have a good inkling. Most online commerce: that is to say, almost people have heard of one longstanding everyone with a computer and a connection. internet faultline: the so-called Great To a foreign retailer, for instance, data Firewall of China.1 Residents of China controls might as well be a trade control.6 cannot easily access major parts of the Then there are content controls. Users global internet. Instead, popular non- have long been accustomed to copyright Chinese apps and services are reproduced laws restricting certain media in different by Chinese companies for those within the jurisdictions.7 Now even user-submitted Firewall. We have Google, they have Baidu. content is increasingly subject to stronger We have Facebook, they have Tencent. We controls. Germany’s NetzDG law to target have Twitter, they have Weibo. And so on. “hate speech” requires platforms to appoint No wonder China’s “netizens” and global local censorship representatives to comply web “surfers” rarely interact. with government removal mandates within China is by no means alone. The 24 hours.8 A report from Justitia finds some OpenNet Initiative tracks internet 13 countries that have proposed or enacted balkanization through its Global Internet laws modeled on this “digital Berlin Wall.”9 Filtering Map.2 Countries such as Iran, Other countries target encryption. Syria, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Russia These strong digital security techniques have imposed filtering controls for various help to conceal data. Yet they also frustrate political, social, security, and infrastructure law enforcement efforts to extract data. purposes. It is no coincidence that the Measures like Australia’s Assistance and worst offending nations are among the top Access Bill of 2018 require communications agitators against the prevailing global order. providers to build government backdoors But traditional allies have started to turn into encryption technologies upon request.10 as well. The EU’s landmark General Data In other words, anyone with a website Protection Regulation (GDPR) made many accessible in Australia may be deputized as US-based websites inaccessible to much of a government hacker. According to Global Europe3—users had to route around such Partners Digital’s World Map of Encryption geofencing with VPNs (Virtual Private Laws and Policies, some two dozen nations Networks) or forgo access altogether. The impose similar obligations on individuals.11 EU-US Privacy Shield, which regulates Online security, too, is becoming even more interbloc data flows, is undergoing legal uneven. challenges in the European Court of Justice.4 Even in the US, cracks are growing. The JOURNAL of The JAMES MADISON INSTITUTE California’s Consumer Privacy Act is styled developed as they did. Lacking the scale in the vein of the GDPR; other states are and user accessibility that these companies considering similar legislation.12 Proposals provide, connectivity might still be like the Lawful Access to Encrypted limited to the technical few and to major Data Act13 and the EARN IT Act14 take institutions with the budgets and labor to aim at encryption like Australia. The navigate a fragmented computing and legal latter also threatens liability protections environment. enjoyed by platforms through Section Or perhaps more development would 230 of the Communications Decency have accrued to innovating around legal Act.15 If removed, platforms might more liabilities. If there is no central entity aggressively censor impolitic speech as has managing data, there is no central entity been done in Germany. on which to place data transfer controls— The net effect of these trends is to craft governments would have to track down and an internet experience that is far from control each individual user. universal. Should they continue, the default We are accustomed to the “walled web will be more or less traditionally “open” garden” or trusted third party model of depending on your location. networking and computing today, but there One reason the open web so quickly are other options. For example, we do not became “open” at all is that private rely on one platform to provide all email companies and multi-stakeholder messaging. There are communications organizations provided the scale to support protocols—such as SMTP, IMAP, and and connect global populations. Boosted POP3—that set out the rules that any entity by US policies such as Section 230 and the can use to connect. Anyone can use a Gmail laissez faire Framework for Global Electronic account or an encrypted email service or Commerce,16 American companies led the even set up their own server using the same charge. No wonder they dominate today. rule set. While this global scale undoubtedly Much of the internet actually operates increased access, it came at the cost of through protocols. The Department of seeding centralized vulnerabilities. In Defense-developed TCP/IP sets the rules other words, the same entities that were for how packets of data are sent. More so instrumental in globalizing the social people may be familiar with HTTP, which internet are also the ones that can be and are sets rules for how links are accessed online. targeted to descale connectivity, whatever Dozens of such protocols operate almost the justification. invisibly to form the internet protocol suite Imagine an alternative history where that supports the web. Although protocol America’s technology policy combination rules are crafted by standards-setting of hands-off e-commerce regulation and bodies, their applications are decentralized. liability protections for platforms did Open source software projects provide not exist. It is unlikely that the platforms other more decentralized alternatives. In that are so embattled today would have contrast to proprietary software, where The JOURNAL of The JAMES MADISON INSTITUTE code is kept secret, open source projects internet users are locked into existing are developed in public by anyone who central platforms because of the “network wants to contribute. Because no one entity effect.”22 A social network becomes more can conceal or control the software, open valuable as the number of connections source projects offer more user freedom increases. It is hard, but not impossible, to and perhaps more security (since bugs can overcome network effects to compete with be caught by the public). The downside is existing platforms. It is even more difficult that open source projects can be non-user to do this as an open source and perhaps friendly or slow to add new features since unfunded project with no obvious route to they are often a hobbyist pursuit. monetization. Large companies like Facebook and There is one other major difference— Google do not operate as protocols or perhaps a downside—that such open source projects. They are private and decentralized alternatives present. centralized. But there is no technical reason Centralized platforms compete by matching that this should be the case. users with relevant content and other users. In some instances, protocol or open Decentralized networks are necessarily source alternatives already exist. For more opaque by design. Users are free to example, many people are unsatisfied by broadcast data, but these will be less “legible” Twitter’s content moderation policies. They to any intended or unintended audiences.23 can at any time host their own Mastodon Where the platform-based web encouraged instance and run an open source social controllable virality, the protocol-based network. Twitter itself has launched an web encourages uncontrollable small-scale initiative—called Blue Sky—to develop affinity grouping. This may be a good thing similar open and decentralized technical for people who wish to be discrete, but a standards for social media.17 challenge for those who seek attention. It is no coincidence that decentralized The future of the internet may well be and open source projects have attracted two-tiered. The besieged “open” web could new interest at the same time that data limp along a little less openly than before. controversies and controls have proliferated. Barring significant cultural and policy Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin—which change, jurisdictional data controls will replace trusted third parties in financial continue to fracture the global internet transactions with a peer-to-peer network— experience. Particular platforms may come are some of the most well-known.18 Similar and go, but the central service provider projects seek to route around trusted third model to which most internet users are party vulnerabilities in domains such as accustomed would continue.