We Can Create a More Humane Internet

The United Nations is part of a growing movement advocating a more humane internet — one that puts data empowerment and democracy at the forefront of its design and purpose.

Do you ever get the feeling the internet isn’t what it once was?

I remember when social media first burst onto the scene, we UN communicators were excited. Digital platforms held so much promise. We could use them to engage millions of people directly and move them to act for a better world.

To some extent our optimism was justified: Digital spaces have done much good — connecting the isolated, reuniting displaced families fleeing wars, helping grassroots movements organize and giving community and voice to the oppressed.

Over time, our presence on social media grew exponentially to hundreds of millions of followers across the UN system today. When harnessed for good, these spaces can help empower individuals and give agency to those who are often excluded and marginalized.

But there is a problem, a big one. The online world, and social media in particular, has consolidated over time, concentrating power in the hands of a few giants. Now most of us spend time online engaging with one of a handful of highly powerful platforms.

These platforms are optimized for one thing: to scrape and monetize our data. Data that tells valuable stories about us.

Every click, every comment, every other site we visit in our browser. What we read, watch, say, and buy. The music we listen to. The workout routines we follow. What and who we like and what and who we don’t. Our politics, ages, health and relationship status. Our entire identities.

Right now, though we create it, that information isn’t ours. It belongs to the platforms.

In fact, many people are only vaguely aware that they have unwittingly become a commodity, and that information scraped from their online relationships, conversations, location, and photos, is used to trade online ad space on global platforms comparable to stock exchanges.

We are left with very few options. The platforms don’t give us much control over how our data is used or tell us much about how this influences the algorithms that curate our feeds for us, promoting some material above others.

But what if I told you there is another way? A way to keep all the benefits of social media while empowering users with control over their own data, and choice over how it is used.

One approach is interoperability. The fediverse is an interconnected network of social media platforms allowing users to interact with one another across platforms — like with email. This is not a new idea, and neither is the technology that supports it. But it is getting more popular.

What’s great about this kind of decentralized social networking is that it liberates users. This way, users choose the platform — and the terms and conditions — that suits them. If you want to leave a platform, you leave, taking all your data, content, and followers with you.

So, what does a more humane future look like for the internet? The answers lie in approaches that place power back in users’ hands, as growing numbers demand more awareness of and control over how their data are being collected, used and sold.

One inspiring initiative is Project Liberty, which is “stitching together an ecosystem of technologists, academics, policymakers and citizens committed to building a people-powered internet — where the data is ours to manage, the platforms are ours to govern, and the power is ours to reclaim.” My team and I have been exploring these approaches as part of a UN drive to make our information ecosystems more humane.

In June, we launched the UN Global Principles for Information Integrity, a set of recommendations for a healthier information ecosystem. One of its five pillars is public empowerment, including the demand that people are given control over their online experience.

The Principles urge technology companies to enhance user control and choice over who gets to use their data and for what purpose, including interoperability with a range of services from different providers.

So, let’s not settle for an internet that harms us. Let’s demand one designed for humans. An internet where users are empowered to set the terms, can make informed decisions, and express themselves freely. One that protects our data, our information, and our democracies.