Can We Tame the Wild West of Big Tech Media?

To Retain the Promise and Decrease the Danger of the Internet, the Federal Government Needs to Rebuild Our Digital Infrastructure—Starting With Revoking Section 230

Why do so many people, including both former President Donald Trump and new President Joe Biden, keep talking about getting rid of an obscure law called Section 230?

The short answer is that Section 230, part of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, is the legal underpinning for one of the largest and most consequential experiments in American history.

Since the birth of Big Tech Media 15 years ago—let’s drop the friendly-sounding misnomer “social” media—our nearly 250-year-old republic has become a test case. Can a nation’s news and information infrastructure, the …

by Steven Hill | January 25, 2021

Ending the Disinformation Era

In an Age of Distrust, Local Media Is Our Secret Weapon

by Sarah Rothbard | January 22, 2021

After an election, an attempted insurrection, and a transfer of power defined in part by a massive amount of disinformation, what would it take to get Americans to begin trusting …

How Minnesota Teachers Invented a Proto-Internet More Centered on Community Than Commerce

In 1967, Eighteen School Districts Around the Twin Cities Created a Computing Network Connecting More Than 130,000 Students

by Joy Lisi Rankin | February 21, 2019

In 1971, three student-teachers in the Minneapolis public school system created the computer game The Oregon Trail for students in their American history class. In this game, players could imagine …

When You Live Online, Will Anyone Know When You Die?

Public Grieving on Social Media Hides a Darker Private Reality

By Emma Electra Jones | September 12, 2017

I suspected that something was wrong on the Sunday morning when I saw the beginning of a Facebook post in my newsfeed sidebar that said, in French, “Our dear AJ …

Yes, Classroom Tech Can Tackle Inequality—but Change Takes Politics and Patience

Digital Education Is Lifting Students While Challenging Academics and Silicon Valley

By Reed Johnson | June 16, 2017

Even as digital technology has grown exponentially more sophisticated, accessible, and integral to our lives, social inequality has cast a deeper shadow across the United States in recent decades. Simultaneously, …

For a More Open Society, Keep the Internet Neutral

Metering Traffic or Filtering Speech Would Throttle Democracy and Innovation

By Terry Kramer | June 13, 2017

Why would someone who spent much of his career working for a multinational telecommunications company care so much about preserving “net neutrality?”

That someone would be me. I worked for Vodafone, …

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