UN Internet Governance Forum contribution: Establishing news media independence and parity in the era of internet giants

In our journey into the Information Age, internet giants have risen as potent wielders of information, operating in concert with, yet distinct from, traditional news media. Propelled by the force of the network effect, they have constructed a pervasive layer around news media, commanding not only the diffusion of content but also its revenue streams. Consumer attention, once monopolized by publishers, is now dispersed across the web, revealing a significant shift in the locus of power.

This discourse hinges on acknowledging the internet's inherent propensity toward centralization. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we should assume that for any given utility, centralization is an inevitable outcome and can only be corrected to the detriment of our total internet capabilities. While centralization increases the utility of the internet to our benefit, it is also hard coupled to governance, which undermines and threatens societies.

Despite this seismic shift in the information landscape, the need for high-quality, relevant, and trustworthy content persists. The reordering of power has not eroded the worth of content; it has merely transformed the mechanisms of its distribution and control. The erosion of revenues and industry bankruptcies arepressing issues, yet they are merely symptoms of a deeper problem: the declining independence of global news media, due to the increasing control exerted by the network utilities to which they are tethered.

Addressing the problem demands also recognizing that breaking utilities apart will not change things. Consumers derive significant value from platforms, which tend towards centralization because, as utilities, they are just servers that users point to. History demonstrates that antitrust interventions typically result in the emergence of another dominant entity. The value gap is simply refilled by yet another browser application pulling content from a server—just with a new name. Thus, we must calibrate our approach in the light of this reality.

The critical task at hand is to reconsider the modalities of dissemination—the so called "wrappers" around content—to better align with broader societal needs. This does not entail revolutionizing the content itself, but reimagining content governance, steering toward an information environment that reflects reality rather than one distorted by algorithms that favor outrageous content.

Computer programmers codify rules into systems that constrain our possibilities. This is in stark contrast to law that simply communicates the limits of acceptable activity and then requires incentives and disincentives to ensure those laws are carried out. Many of the challenges to the internet governance of our epoch stem from the fact that the digital world now commands vast aspects of our lives. To regain focus on news media, it stands to reason that code, rather than law, dominates the flow of information. An obvious outcome is that propagandists and powerful actors want to influence the space. They do so either by leveraging the properties of algorithms designed to make money for the platforms’ owners, or by designing the algorithms to make more money. The welfare of our social systems figures last.

In a domain where legislation is rightly resisted to maintain the freedom of the press, it is incumbent on us to organize and secure our own information ecosystem. It is simply the historic lack of capability, due to dozens of factors—ranging from existential threats, to technical feasibility, to the news media industry's non-interactive nature—which has kept us from solving our contemporary crisis. Let's consider a promising, novel pathway forward. If news media organized to provide a strong signal of trustworthy content as a utility, governments might find it more difficult to enact "fake news" laws that threaten press freedoms because of pressure from society. Additionally, the most dominant platforms would be financially incentivized to provide advertisers with the safest advertising space possible and to do so at a negligible cost. More importantly, it would be difficult for platforms to refuse to use the signal due to their ineffective content governance and the fact that the industry would be organized to protect consumers in a way that is safe, liberal, and democratic.

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