Transkript
00:00:00: [Music playing] [Applause]
00:00:07: [Music playing] Hello and welcome
00:00:09: to Inside IONOS. My name is Andreas Maurer. The internet, with its predecessor the ARPANET, is 50
00:00:14: years old. The Internet is indispensable nowadays. Everyone carries mobile internet access in their
00:00:18: trousers with a smartphone, and because of social media, everyone has become a content creator. But,
00:00:23: censorship efforts, surveillance, and the risk of data misuse threaten the basic principles
00:00:27: of freedom and openness that have characterized the internet. Nicole Scott, a Scottish journalist
00:00:31: who lives for a couple of years in Berlin, has dealt with this subject in a video documentary.
00:00:37: [Music playing] Welcome to INSIDE IONOS, Nicole. Thank you very
00:00:43: much for inviting me. So, what made you want to make this documentary about the openness and
00:00:50: freedom of the Internet in the first place? It was really interesting. I started talking to Annabelle
00:00:55: from IONOS and we were brainstorming. We were really thinking about different ideas of what's
00:01:01: going to happen in the future. It was sort of over dinner and we realised that there's a discussion
00:01:07: coming up and it's going to be important in the future to discuss the ideas of digital democracy,
00:01:13: the fact that our internet has borders. What does that mean for the everyday person,
00:01:19: like how are we going to trust in the future? And website ownership and domain validation
00:01:25: was one of the central ideas that we kept coming back to and what does that mean in the future and
00:01:29: how are we gonna have information. We just got excited about it and that's how it was born. Was
00:01:36: there any particular element that made you move in this direction, anything where you say the freedom
00:01:42: of the internet is at risk? I think if we all look at the news and the state of the media,
00:01:48: we can all see that our digital freedoms are at risk. With AI in the last year, everything is
00:01:55: becoming more uncertain, and the ability for the average person to fact check and understand what's
00:02:02: real and what's not is something that's becoming more present every day. As we move forward and we
00:02:09: think about digital freedom, what does that even mean anymore? Because the idea that the freedom to
00:02:16: say whatever you want online, as in freedom of speech, is not the right conversation,
00:02:21: and that's something everybody plays out. And we got to the point where it's also cultural,
00:02:27: what's okay to say out loud, and it's not even about democratic versus non-democratic, it's
00:02:33: about how do we come to a consensus online? And we had the net neutrality discussion a few years ago,
00:02:40: and it's evolved into content governance online. It's the whole scenario of what the internet is
00:02:46: changing. And I think as a technology expert it was hard to say: this is how the internet works.
00:02:54: And when we got down to it, the infrastructure of the internet was this layer that is a physical
00:03:00: thing and is hyper-controlling, the way content looks and is viewed and feels online. And the
00:03:07: physical infrastructure of the internet is definitely one of those things that even
00:03:10: technology experts today would be hard pressed to say this is exactly how it will work in 2024.
00:03:17: And that was a layer that I thought was really interesting because the physical layer of the
00:03:23: Internet is real, it's tangible, it's wires and cables and servers, and everyone tends to think
00:03:28: of the Internet as an abstract concept, when it's service providers like IONOS that deal
00:03:34: with the physical hardware empowering the internet. And how does that layer work with
00:03:41: the ideas of content in the future? And I found that really interesting because no one has looked
00:03:45: at this physical, tangible thing because I like to be reminded that it's not an abstract concept,
00:03:51: the Internet, even though all the debates around the Internet are philosophical. The internet is
00:03:56: a physical thing, governed by physical rules. And that was comforting to me. Before we go a little
00:04:02: bit deeper into a lot of the issues that you've mentioned, obviously you didn't do this alone,
00:04:06: you talked to a lot of experts. I think I counted 17 or 18 different people that you've interviewed.
00:04:11: How did you choose these experts?, When you're looking at what's going to happen online in the
00:04:16: future in terms of physical infrastructure, the list made itself. I didn't want to talk to the
00:04:25: same leaders that everybody's been talking to for the last decade about what's going to happen. I
00:04:30: wanted to talk to the people who are shaping the rules and policies today. ICANN, and then that
00:04:37: led to the IETF, which I had never heard of, and they also gave me different names of people they
00:04:44: thought I should talk to. After I said no, I don't want to talk to the big names of the internet, the
00:04:49: founders, I want to talk to people who are working and shaping it today. And I added Lily Ray,
00:04:55: who's one of the most influential SEO experts, and I added Monty from MariaDB, who's also a
00:05:02: legacy influencer, but he's also shaping the way databases are moving forward. Then there's Martin
00:05:08: from SAP, who's a futurist, who's using their very big and influential technology to, you know, shape
00:05:16: the way businesses are going to evolve. It's these people who are shaping the future of the Internet.
00:05:23: You've really covered a lot of different aspects and one thing that you've mentioned several
00:05:27: times is the physical infrastructure, the wires that make up the internet. When you think about
00:05:33: freedom and openness, that's not the first thing that comes to mind. Maybe you could talk about
00:05:39: how that physical infrastructure relates to that aspect of freedom and democracy on the Internet.
00:05:45: The reason you have to deal with the physical is because of the DNS, and this is where it gets
00:05:50: really interesting because the Domain Name Server just seems nerdy and random as a central issue,
00:05:57: but it's because it's become political. Maybe we should just roughly explain what DNS is for
00:06:03: people who haven't heard the term. It's the Domain Name Service, and it's basically like
00:06:07: the phone book of the internet. Yeah, exactly. In the content series I play a librarian for
00:06:14: one scene because the librarian acts like the DNS, you know, it knows where all the books are,
00:06:20: I go and find the books and I bring the books back. It's like I'm fetching content from the
00:06:25: internet. I think what people miss is that the content of a website is on a single server in
00:06:32: a single place. Yes, there are ways in which content is replicated online, but in general the
00:06:39: content sits in one place. The DNS will take you to that place and then it will bring the content
00:06:45: back to you. What happens is that because of the physicality of the location of the DNS,
00:06:52: it's a specific place, governments can say, you know what, let's just block the DNS, we'll just
00:06:57: stop people from going there, we'll say they can't visit this physical location. But the problem is,
00:07:05: just because someone can't visit it doesn't mean that it's not still physically there. The content
00:07:10: is still sitting on the server in Germany and Switzerland and somewhere else. It's just that you
00:07:15: can't get to it because you don't know the phone number or you don't know the location. To me it's
00:07:22: a lazy way of moderating content, because you can make requests to take down content,
00:07:28: and that's something governments avoid because it's a bit sloppy. But then they say, well,
00:07:34: let's just pick the DNS. They're messing with the physical infrastructure of the internet.
00:07:41: How the information gets from a physical server to your smartphone. And that's why it became
00:07:49: interesting to me, because if we're looking at how the internet is going to be free in the future,
00:07:53: we need to know how we're going to moderate our content, what content governance looks like
00:07:58: online, and the physicality of the internet plays a big part in that. The most famous or infamous
00:08:05: example is the so-called Great Firewall of China, where the Chinese government has taken control of
00:08:11: the entire DNS infrastructure. But then again, China is not the only country. I mean, we have
00:08:16: similar discussions here in Europe, and even in Germany, I can remember the first discussions
00:08:21: about excessive blocking in 2006 or 2007, more than 15 years ago, when we discussed this for
00:08:26: dealing with child pornography. But we also had the same discussion in Germany, for example, about
00:08:30: gambling sites, which are illegal in some German states. It's not just something that happens in
00:08:36: the communist part of the world. I think that's exactly it. We have this illusion that because
00:08:43: we live in a democratic country that we have an open and free internet, but the truth is
00:08:48: that even though we have democracy, it doesn't guarantee freedom online. And I think that's
00:08:54: one of the central ideas that I try to get across, and why I talk about China and its great firewall,
00:09:00: is because, like in China, people know that content is being blocked, people know
00:09:05: that they're being monitored, and they're more digitally savvy because of it. I feel like maybe
00:09:11: we have a complacency in democratic states because we believe that our internet is online, we're not
00:09:16: as vigilant about maintaining its freedom, because we somehow believe that democracy in our country
00:09:23: state means democracy online, and that's not true. We have to look at how we develop rules for the
00:09:31: internet because there's no global guidelines. I mean, there are technical guidelines, but there's
00:09:36: no global content guidelines. It's all country by country. It's definitely a challenge for a global
00:09:43: company like ianos because of course we have to comply with a lot of different laws, like all
00:09:47: the ISPs and so on, and all the big companies, and it's really a challenge, um, because as you said,
00:09:52: there's not just this one law that governs the Internet, there's a lot of different regulations
00:09:57: in different countries. And as a company working in this space, it's very difficult to comply
00:10:01: with all the regulations around the world. And that's absolutely true, and it's one of those
00:10:06: things where ISPs around the world are not all trustworthy, you know what I mean? There are
00:10:12: countries where you have to be careful and you have to know what laws your ISP is following.
00:10:18: And there's one issue that I touched on, which is internet throttling, and I found that interesting
00:10:24: because it's a legal way of controlling the internet. And there are business cases for it. No,
00:10:31: I think it depends on where you are whether it's legal. I think that's basically net neutrality.
00:10:35: We mentioned that term at the beginning, that we're talking about the idea of net neutrality,
00:10:40: that basically every bit is equal. And in Europe, for example, we have had a regulation
00:10:43: that enforces net neutrality for a couple of years now. I think it also depends on which jurisdiction
00:10:50: you are in, what you can do. And here in Germany, for example, we've had some big court cases where
00:10:54: some ISP services have been shut down because they didn't comply with net neutrality. Yeah,
00:10:59: and there was this big one in the US where I can't remember which telco bought Hulu and then tried
00:11:06: to divert all their traffic to Hulu, and like throttled Netflix to make people try to switch
00:11:11: service providers. There is a business case behind how throttling happens in democratic countries.
00:11:19: It's not just the way it happens in China where, you know, instead of blocking a website, you know,
00:11:24: it's just throttled you're not sure if it's just your internet where the pages are loading or if
00:11:31: it's being blocked. The same technology is used legally in a lot of countries, but then it can be
00:11:38: used by oppressive states to control content. It's also a way in which we in our democratic
00:11:45: countries are aware that this could be a way in which governments could control the free flow
00:11:53: of access to content by not blocking it but just making it slower or harder to access. But again,
00:11:58: you're talking about democratic countries, but not all democratic countries have the same rules. I'm
00:12:03: just thinking about another issue that you touched on, which is the area of social networks, which
00:12:06: have become really huge powers in terms of public opinion, they should definitely watch what they're
00:12:14: doing. But on the other hand, again, when you talk about things like hate speech in general, how do
00:12:19: social networks deal with civil liberties, with privacy and especially with freedom of speech?
00:12:25: The rules are very different from country to country. For example, in both the US and Germany,
00:12:30: freedom of speech is enshrined in the constitution in different ways, but it has a very different
00:12:34: status in the US than it does here. Totally, and I think that makes it very difficult. Yeah, I mean,
00:12:41: nowhere in the world is there as much freedom to say whatever you want as there is in America,
00:12:46: you know. I mean, that thing just doesn't work in a lot of other countries. One of the ideas that I
00:12:51: bring up in the show is the fact that in Germany, the rules about what you can say are strict,
00:13:00: and this creates a nicer narrative than what can happen in, say, America, where you're just
00:13:06: allowed to say whatever you want. But then it got interesting when I looked at this video game,
00:13:11: Wolfenstein 2, which came out a couple of years ago, and they replaced the Nazi symbolism with
00:13:16: a different symbol. Because in video games specifically, you know, you couldn't show that
00:13:21: in Germany. I mean, they relaxed the laws for video games, but then it was, you know, illegal
00:13:27: in Germany but legal everywhere else. Because of Germany's history, its cultural background,
00:13:33: you know, it makes sense, and it also makes sense to relax the rules in video games. For example,
00:13:39: Germany changed the law to, you know, keep up with modern times. It's just an example of how
00:13:44: cultural relativity, you know, really affects the content that we're going to see in each country.
00:13:50: And I don't think it's going to get any easier as we move forward because countries are putting
00:13:55: up more and more borders around their content and creating sort of borders online. And that's
00:14:03: a reality, but it feels like a new thing that's going to be a discussion over the next few years,
00:14:09: and it's gaining momentum now. We've said we don't have a global internet government,
00:14:15: but on the other hand we do have something like that. You mentioned two bodies that exist,
00:14:19: one is the IETF, the Internet Engineering Task Force, and the other is ICANN, the Internet
00:14:26: Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Yeah, I haven't heard that one for a while. Oh man,
00:14:32: what a long name, it's awkward too. What is the purpose of these organisations and how are they
00:14:40: set up in this global context? Well, it took me a while to really understand what ICANN does.
00:14:47: They assign names and numbers, it's website addresses, IP addresses, like the numbers that
00:14:55: you just put together with dots, and then they control all the domain names. And I thought, oh,
00:15:00: why is this a big deal? .com, .de, .ru, .biz, .tv, I mean, we have so many. What power can
00:15:11: this really have? And then I realised, a lot. ICANN used to be an American-focused body,
00:15:19: and then it became international because so much power couldn't be consolidated in one country.
00:15:26: And now it's a multi-stakeholder approach, all these companies, including IONOS, have a say in
00:15:35: what happens with these domain identifiers. What could go wrong? Well, a lot. At the beginning of
00:15:42: the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Ukraine tried to kick Russia off the Internet, to take their .ru domain
00:15:49: off the Internet. And now, if ICANN had said yes, no one would be able to visit a .ru website,
00:15:56: and that is huge. If Russia, for example, were to take control of their domain name,
00:16:04: instead of it being with ICANN, which is a neutral governing body, Russia could potentially,
00:16:10: if they chose to, if they got control of their domain name, then any website within that domain
00:16:18: would not be trustworthy, because they could decide that this newspaper that all Russians get
00:16:23: their news from is suddenly a government front, but it's still got the name that everyone trusts,
00:16:29: and it's just redirected. They could redirect any website within .ru to make it whatever they
00:16:37: want it to be, to show any information. And that is bad for freedom and openness. And that's why
00:16:45: ICANN is very important. And I started talking to ICANN, and then everybody kept saying IETF, IETF,
00:16:52: and I thought, what is this task force? And I liked it. Task Force, it felt really action
00:16:56: oriented. But they're the ones who control the technical specifications of the internet.
00:17:03: The best example is when the internet changed from sequential loading. If you have a website,
00:17:09: the page sort of loads from top to bottom, and then we went to dynamic. And that happened because
00:17:16: we were getting voice calls and it mattered, the order of the packets. Because we couldn't
00:17:21: have our video and voice coming in the order that was easiest for the internet to send. That's how
00:17:27: we got video calls online as standard across all browsers. That's how we got responsive, dynamic
00:17:34: websites. It was through changes in standards. But what's even stranger is that with ICANN, you have
00:17:40: to follow the rules and they come to a consensus. With the IETF, it's just guidelines. Someone can
00:17:45: decide whatever they want. I don't think that's an aspect you covered in your documentary, but it's
00:17:51: really interesting, uh, interesting because the main standards of the Internet are called RFCs,
00:17:56: Requests for Comments. So, and that's how it all started, back in the days of the ARPANET,
00:18:00: the predecessor of the Internet, which was funded by the US Department of Defense, where
00:18:04: they started sending out a request for comments to propose a standard, and all the engineers just
00:18:09: eventually agreed on what was best for the system. And a lot of the way the Internet works today is
00:18:13: still based on those RFCs. It's quite interesting how these two systems work side by side. Yeah,
00:18:20: that's it. It's this multi-stakeholder approach where everybody sort of has a voice, you know.
00:18:26: What's interesting about the task force is that, I'm talking about Google Chrome. How Chrome could
00:18:34: just decide that they want to change the timelines for security certificates? Now they're every year,
00:18:41: but Google wants to change them to every three months. And basically, if they did that, they
00:18:45: would be forcing an internet standard. And people asking themselves if that's part of Google's job
00:18:51: to decide the security of all the websites on the internet? But then, in the same breath, is it bad
00:18:57: that websites are secured every 3 months because it gives, you know, bad actors less time to hack
00:19:02: in. Like, it's not a bad suggestion, it's just, do we want Google to have that much control? Yeah,
00:19:09: it's probably just their market power. Another aspect where Google plays a role is the way
00:19:14: browsers used to work. At least, I don't know if it's still the same, but about 10 years ago,
00:19:20: you definitely had to write different code in HTML for Internet Explorer, for Chrome, for Mozilla
00:19:26: Firefox, because of course the W3C standard for HTML, but then every company used their own
00:19:32: flavour of it and they didn't always interact with each other. Absolutely, I remember thinking, oh,
00:19:38: this website doesn't work in Netscape, I wonder what browser they've programmed it for. You're
00:19:43: putting it into different browsers and trying to figure out how to make it work. And also talking
00:19:49: about Google, who are behind Chrome, of course Google is the world's biggest search engine and
00:19:55: that plays an important role in the freedom of the internet. Yeah, that's why I was talking to
00:20:02: Lily Ray, because, honestly, this SEO issue is just very interesting because, honestly, as a
00:20:08: former website owner, I would always think, oh, this is, you know, snake oil, like SEOs are just
00:20:14: making up the rules as they go along. But then it does affect businesses, doesn't it? Like, your
00:20:19: search visibility online is going to affect your livelihood. You can't not take them seriously,
00:20:28: but they're guessing what Google is going to do with their algorithms. And there are other
00:20:35: search engines out there, it's just that Google is the biggest, they dominate the market and decide
00:20:41: who has a stronger livelihood online. If you're a chiropractor who doesn't need the internet, your
00:20:47: visibility as a chiropractor to get new business is going to come from online. The way we work and
00:20:57: live is increasingly tied to our digital presence online, whether we like it or not. And that's
00:21:03: what's a bit scary about, like, Google's control. We talked about the hardware infrastructure of
00:21:08: the internet, but of course at least half of the internet is also software. And basically most of
00:21:14: the internet is based on open source software. I mean, if you think about the Apache web server
00:21:19: and its successors, open source databases like MySQL, MariaDB as its successor, how important
00:21:27: has open source been to the development of the Internet, and what are the current developments
00:21:32: in that area? For me, open source is incredibly important because we need a system that is
00:21:40: verifiable, that is verifiable, that is open, and we need something that multiple people can work
00:21:45: on. And one of the things that I've discovered over the course of this series is that people
00:21:53: don't really want to talk about open source that much anymore. They just think it's a base that
00:21:58: lives there, and you know, like, everybody's just sort of, it's there. It's not changing,
00:22:04: that may not be true, but that's the attitude. And everybody's focused now on open standards,
00:22:09: interoperability, how things work together. But the problem with that is that just because
00:22:16: something has an open standard doesn't mean it's not part of a closed system. Big companies
00:22:25: can have closed systems but an open standard that works with them, and that's not really the spirit
00:22:31: of open source technology at all. And I found it disheartening that the whole industry narrative
00:22:39: has moved from a real open source community to a little bit more of a focus on open standards.
00:22:46: It's interesting that you still have some people who are really pushing this idea of open source,
00:22:50: like Monty Widenius, who you talked to at the Iyona Summit, who invented MySQL, then, uh, his
00:22:57: company was sold to Oracle, who tried to make a business out of it. And as a reaction to that, he
00:23:01: invented the next system, free software, MariaDB, which he put into a foundation to make sure that
00:23:07: it stayed open and free. And I think that's the important work that needs to happen,
00:23:11: because without openness, without a platform of true interoperability, we're not really going to
00:23:20: be able to build anything meaningful. And that's the thing that I'm worried about going
00:23:26: away because I do a lot of work in the automotive industry. And I talk to a lot of executives there,
00:23:32: and they can't wrap their heads around the fact that it's open and free, but there's still a
00:23:37: business model around it. It's been around for 50 years, how is that still an issue? That's one of
00:23:46: the challenges of it. And I think that is crazy. Another big topic that's on everyone's lips every
00:23:53: day, every hour, every time there's a news story, is of course AI, artificial intelligence. And you
00:24:00: touched on this briefly in one of your segments. How do you think AI will affect the state of the
00:24:06: internet in terms of openness and freedom? I think we're going to have a digital divide later on with
00:24:11: people who don't understand how AI works. I mean, we're a year or more into it now, and I think
00:24:18: we're already starting to see a divide between people who use AI and people who don't. Because
00:24:24: it's about optimising the way you work, it's about supercharging your workflow, that's how I see it
00:24:29: as a journalist. I'm the most at risk from AI, but I'm not really worried about it. But it's because,
00:24:38: like, for me, there's going to be a divide between journalists who know how to use AI properly and
00:24:42: journalists who don't. I think it's going to be the same for a lot of industries. And if you're
00:24:50: not increasing your digital literacy to understand what AI is, how it works, what blockchain is,
00:24:58: how it works, why it's important for the future of our society. If you don't understand these
00:25:06: concepts, then you're in danger of being left behind. And that's more the point I'm making,
00:25:10: not that we should be afraid of technology, but we should be afraid of our reluctance to engage
00:25:16: with technology in a meaningful way. If we all just think that it's, you know, we're online all
00:25:22: the time and we're just consuming on Instagram and scrolling and, you know, we're just putting things
00:25:29: out there in a way that we think the algorithm will like or we think our network will like,
00:25:34: then we're not contributing meaningfully. It's really about understanding how technology works
00:25:41: and how we can best use it, and that's a challenge for society at large. Definitely,
00:25:49: and we just did a survey a couple of months ago in the US and in some of the big European countries,
00:25:56: Germany, Spain, France and the UK. And generally there is some awareness, but it's quite different
00:26:03: from country to country. And what I found very interesting was that the UK was the most
00:26:08: critical of AI, whereas Germany, the US and, surprisingly to me, Spain were very open. But
00:26:15: of course we still have a lot to learn. But I'm really curious when we do the same survey again,
00:26:19: maybe in a year's time, what the result will be and how the business will evolve. I mean,
00:26:23: you mentioned journalism, but it will affect basically every business you can think of.
00:26:27: Absolutely, I mean AI is going to affect everybody and it's more about understanding how you can use
00:26:32: it to your advantage. How can it teach you to do new things? How can you use it to get more out of
00:26:39: what you're doing? How can you look at the job you have now and optimise it, whatever it is, using
00:26:45: AI. It's about recognising that it's a tool that you can use and not, you know, this omnipotent
00:26:52: being that's going to be, you know, sentient and take over your role, because I think it's really
00:27:00: just about, as the technology develops, it's about how we use it. And I think that as a society this
00:27:09: is such a powerful tool that we're struggling to imagine how it can be used to our advantage. This
00:27:17: is one of the first times in a long time that our creative minds are saying, well, how can we
00:27:23: use this? I mean the possibilities are limitless and when things are limitless how do you decide.
00:27:28: That's the state that I think society is in and I think it's exciting. Finally, another technology
00:27:36: that you mentioned that I didn't have on my radar at all is something called Web 5. I mean,
00:27:40: I know Web 1 was the classic web, Web 2 was the social web, Web 3 started with blockchain,
00:27:46: but what does Web 5 stand for and how can it improve the freedom, liberty and openness of
00:27:52: the internet. Web 5 is Web 2 plus Web 3. Because you sort of think, well, we're on Web 5, what
00:28:01: happened to Web 4? But it's Web 3, which involves blockchain, this hopeful idea of going back to the
00:28:10: original concept of the internet, where everyone has autonomy over their data, where everyone has
00:28:16: ownership over who they are online and their digital presence, all validated by blockchain,
00:28:23: combined with Web 2, which is what we have now, where we've given away all of our convenience,
00:28:29: we've given away all of our data because we wanted things to be convenient. It's this combination
00:28:35: of Web 2 plus Web 3 equals Web 5. I love the idea, but we're still at the beginning. I mean,
00:28:43: most people haven't heard of it, of course, because it's almost new. I was worried it
00:28:48: was going to be a buzzword, but really I think the idea is solid. I'm filling in the blanks,
00:28:55: but it's an interesting concept. I think an important aspect of it is also decentralisation,
00:29:00: if I understood it correctly. And of course on the one hand you have things like blockchain,
00:29:05: but I wonder if services like the Fediverse also fit into this concept. In Europe, Mastodon
00:29:10: is a big thing, and the latest big thing in terms of social media platforms was of course Threads,
00:29:15: the new platform from Meta. And they've announced that they're going to open it up to the Fediverse,
00:29:20: to the ActivityPub protocol. Even some of the big players are moving in that direction. Absolutely,
00:29:26: I mean we have to change the way the internet is now because it is broken. Like, as it's evolved,
00:29:34: we didn't expect it to be the thing that it's become, and we don't have individual autonomy over
00:29:39: our data. And that's important because governments and tech companies haven't worked together in a
00:29:46: harmonious way. Each tech company is too fast, the governments are too slow, and the internet
00:29:51: is caught in the middle, not being what the population really needs. I think you're right, you
00:29:59: know, this concept of decentralisation, ownership of identity and convenience, right, are going to
00:30:07: come together in Web 5. And we're starting to see those concepts develop now. Governments are slow,
00:30:14: but nevertheless we've seen a lot of new regulation in the last two or three years,
00:30:18: particularly here in the EU. If you think about the Data Act, the Digital
00:30:22: Markets Act, the Digital Services Act, the NIS2 initiative, just recently the AI Act
00:30:30: that's being discussed. How do you see these legal processes and these new laws? They're necessary
00:30:36: and sometimes they feel a bit too little, too late. I mean, but the AI Act for Europe,
00:30:43: a continent that I feel is moving very slowly, looks good. But where I think a lot of these
00:30:51: laws need to be strengthened is the involvement of tech companies. I think that neither side can do
00:30:59: it alone and we need them to come together and be much more interactive. I feel like the way
00:31:07: that lobbying for regulation happens, the way that tech companies are half a step ahead of everybody,
00:31:13: all the time, you know, they take advantage of the consumer a lot, most of the time. This is
00:31:22: the thing where we need the tech companies to get on board and start leading, whereas at the
00:31:27: moment they're just leading for their profits and their shareholders. And the concept of
00:31:34: how tech companies work and how governments have personal freedoms and how society should evolve,
00:31:42: at its core, hopefully in an idealistic world, we need those things to come together. And
00:31:47: that's the piece that I think is starting to happen, but really needs to happen a lot faster
00:31:54: and a lot more meaningfully. You started working on this project with quite a sceptical attitude,
00:32:00: otherwise you wouldn't have done it. Now you've talked to a lot of experts, you've really delved
00:32:05: into the subject. How optimistic or pessimistic are you after all this work? I have to admit,
00:32:10: 50/50. Part of me is really excited about the potential of the internet, how things are going
00:32:19: to evolve in a more meaningful way for people, like the potential of AI to impact people's lives,
00:32:26: to teach things, to guide us. The power of all these things that used to be too difficult are now
00:32:35: at our fingertips, like the human potential that can be unleashed with AI and how the internet is
00:32:42: evolving is exciting. But we have to choose. People have to choose not to be addicted to
00:32:49: scrolling. People have to choose that instead of scrolling, they're going to learn and engage with
00:32:54: what we have in a different way. And that was the part that I struggled with towards the end.
00:33:01: I mean, how do we get people out of their phone addiction. I asked many people and nobody really
00:33:10: gave me an answer that I was super happy with. And that's the part where I'm a bit sceptical,
00:33:17: because you can give somebody a perfect thing, but they have to choose to accept
00:33:23: it. But I think that's the most beautiful thing, is that we are human and we have a choice. That
00:33:30: in itself always gives me hope. I hope that a lot of people will watch the documentary. We will put
00:33:37: all the links in our show notes. And with that, thank you very much, Nicole, for taking the time,
00:33:43: and maybe we'll meet again in a year's time to see how internet freedom has evolved. Absolutely,
00:33:49: I mean, hopefully for the better. [Music] Goodal democracy,
00:33:57: youtube.com/digitaldemocracy. [Music]
00:34:00: [Music] See you next time [Music].