Privacy First: A Better Way to Address Online Harms

State, federal, and international regulators are increasingly concerned about the harms they believe the internet and new technology is causing. The list is long, implicating child safety, journalism, access to healthcare data, digital justice, competition, artificial intelligence, and government surveillance, just to name a few. And the stories behind them are important: no one wants to live in a world where children are preyed upon, we lose access to news, or we face turbocharged discrimination or monopoly power.

This concern about the impact of technology on our values is also not new—both serious concerns and outsized moral panics have accompanied many technological developments. The printing press, the automobile, the victrola, the television, and the VCR all prompted calls for new laws and regulations.