How Free Is the Internet?

OTI Policy Director Prem Trivedi is featured throughout Nicole Scott’s docuseries on internet freedom, discussing the dangers posed by tech monopolies, the consequences of throttling by internet service providers, the complexities of cross-border internet governance, and the importance of civil society’s involvement in corporate governance decision-making.

“Monopolies don’t serve consumer interests or protect rights well. When companies acquire more power and they don’t need to compete with other companies for customer’s business, then the customer loses leverage.”

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“Throttling is a practice by which internet service providers can slow down their customer’s service in a way that limits the total amount of bandwidth that gets consumed. This can allow ISPs—internet service providers—to minimize network congestion, and in more concerning ways, can allow them to charge more for the privileges of higher bandwidth. Throttling can also have some interesting implications for content—shaping the content that people can see—because ISPs don’t just have to throttle speeds universally. So, hypothetically, it can push you towards Netflix over Hulu, if that’s what a provider wanted to do. Or, it might make it very difficult functionally to access a site that a particular government doesn’t want you visiting.”

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“I think you’ve already seen, for many years, in some ways, the splintering of the notion of the unified internet, because different countries have chosen different methods to regulate different aspects of the internet. One sort of illustrative example is the concept of hate speech, or offensive speech. The United States has a much higher threshold for determining what speech the government can actually take action against. The First Amendment’s protections are unrivaled in the world, which means that in the United States, you have a greater expectation of what you can say without governmental interference. Not so, even in Europe—this is not a democratic versus non-democratic distinction, it’s really a cultural distinction even among democracies.”

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“The thing that civil society can do is bring democratic representation, a more diverse set of perspectives, and a focus on marginalized and at-risk groups to bear in corporate governance decision-making.”