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Critics (well, @ezraklein, @superwuster, and @doctorow) say “We didn’t ask for this internet” (surveillance, ads, data collection, platform power) and call for centralized regulation.
But, as i point out in a new piece on @TOTMblog (link in reply), that gets it exactly backwards. The early internet was unusable for most people: no trust, no identity, no reliable payments, no recourse against fraud. What made it work wasn’t central design or regulation; it was entrepreneurial discovery.
Reputation systems, fraud detection, payment protections, targeted advertising—in other words, all the things now criticized—were solutions to real coordination problems. They reduced transaction costs, enabled trust at scale, and funded services billions use every day.
Yes, there are harms. But no system is perfect. Crucially, the harms are not evidence of systemic failure. And they’re constantly being mitigated through the same decentralized process that made the internet valuable in the first place.
It would be a terrible mistake to treat the internet as if it were designed top-down (and therefore fixable that way). It wasn’t. It evolved.
Heavy-handed regulation risks freezing that evolutionary process, entrenching incumbents, and locking in worse outcomes.
We didn’t “ask” for this internet. We discovered it—and we’re still improving it.
But, as i point out in a new piece on @TOTMblog (link in reply), that gets it exactly backwards. The early internet was unusable for most people: no trust, no identity, no reliable payments, no recourse against fraud. What made it work wasn’t central design or regulation; it was entrepreneurial discovery.
Reputation systems, fraud detection, payment protections, targeted advertising—in other words, all the things now criticized—were solutions to real coordination problems. They reduced transaction costs, enabled trust at scale, and funded services billions use every day.
Yes, there are harms. But no system is perfect. Crucially, the harms are not evidence of systemic failure. And they’re constantly being mitigated through the same decentralized process that made the internet valuable in the first place.
It would be a terrible mistake to treat the internet as if it were designed top-down (and therefore fixable that way). It wasn’t. It evolved.
Heavy-handed regulation risks freezing that evolutionary process, entrenching incumbents, and locking in worse outcomes.
We didn’t “ask” for this internet. We discovered it—and we’re still improving it.
