#314: The State of Internet Freedom

Tech Policy Podcast

TechFreedom

Technology

4.8 • 45 Ratings

🗓️ 15 March 2022

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Internet can be a powerful tool for decentralization and resistance. Lately, however, authorities from across the political spectrum have been trying to use it to enforce conformity and exert control. Ari Cohn, TechFreedom’s Free Speech Counsel, and Rachel Altman, its Director of Digital Media, join the show to discuss government efforts to stamp out the Canadian trucker protest, to limit end-to-end encryption, and to dictate how private companies engage in content moderation; and to assess what those efforts mean for the future of Internet freedom.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Does the internet help the powerless or the powerful?
0:11.2	Does it facilitate democracy and decentralized freedom,
0:15.1	or authoritarianism and centralized order?
0:19.1	Needless to say, the internet can do both. You could even say that the
0:23.3	advance of internet technology is something of an arms race between the centralizers and the
0:28.1	decentralizers. Lately, the powerful, the authorities, the man, have been learning to use new
0:36.1	tools to their advantage. You might call it internet wars, the man, have been learning to use new tools to their advantage.
0:38.3	You might call it Internet Wars, the centralizer strike back.
0:43.3	Governments are taking advantage of technological advances, digital platforms, and network effects to exert new forms of control.
0:52.3	They're seeking to use centralized digital financial systems to stamp
0:56.8	out protests. They're seeking to use centralized stores of data to curtail privacy and police
1:03.5	thought and behavior. And they're pressuring centralized speech platforms to favor certain
1:09.1	speakers.
1:14.3	Welcome once again to the Tech Policy Podcast.
1:16.5	I'm Corbyn Barthold.
1:21.2	I'm joined by Ari Cohn, Free Speech Council at Tech Freedom,
1:25.3	and by Rachel Altman, Tech Freedom's Director of Digital Media.
1:28.0	Ari, Rachel, welcome.
1:30.7	Happy to be back.
1:32.7	Yeah, thank you for having us.
1:33.7	I'm so happy to be back.
1:36.2	Yeah, it's great to have you both on.
	...

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