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Today, Mozilla is publishing the 2019 Internet Health Report<\/a> — our third annual examination of the internet, its impact on society and how it influences our everyday lives.<\/p>\n http:\/\/internethealthreport.org\/2019\/<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n The Report paints a mixed picture of what life online looks like today. We\u2019re more connected than ever, with humanity passing the \u201850% of us are now online\u2019 mark earlier this year. And, while almost all of us enjoy the upsides of being connected, we also worry about how the internet and social media are impacting our children, our jobs and our democracies.<\/p>\n When we published last year\u2019s Report, the world was watching the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal unfold — and these worries were starting to grow. Millions of people were realizing that widespread, laissez-faire sharing of our personal data, the massive growth and centralization of the tech industry, and the misuse of online ads and social media was adding up to a big mess.<\/p>\n Over the past year, more and more people started asking: what are we going to do about this mess? How do we push the digital world in a better direction?<\/p>\n As people asked these questions, our ability to see the underlying problems with the system — and to imagine solutions — has evolved tremendously. Recently, we\u2019ve seen governments across Europe step up efforts to monitor and thwart disinformation ahead of the upcoming EU elections. We\u2019ve seen the big tech companies try everything from making ads more transparent to improving content recommendation algorithms to setting up ethics boards (albeit with limited effect and with critics saying \u2018you need to do much more!<\/i>\u2019). And, we\u2019ve seen CEOs and policymakers and activists wrestling with each other over where to go next. We have not \u2018fixed\u2019 the problems, but it does feel like we\u2019ve entered a new, sustained era of debate about what a healthy digital society should look like.<\/p>\n The 2019 Internet Health Report examines the story behind these stories, using interviews with experts, data analysis and visualization, and original reporting. It was also built with input from you, the reader: In 2018, we asked<\/a> readers what issues they wanted to see in the next Report.<\/p>\n In the Report\u2019s three spotlight articles, we unpack three big issues: One examines the need for better machine decision making<\/a> — that is, asking questions like Who designs the algorithms?<\/i> and What data do they feed on?<\/i> and Who is being discriminated against?<\/i> Another examines ways to rethink the ad economy<\/a>, so surveillance and addiction are no longer design necessities. \u00a0The third spotlight article examines the rise of smart cities<\/a>, and how local governments can integrate tech in a way that serves the public good, not commercial interests.<\/p>\n Of course, the Report isn\u2019t limited to just three topics. Other highlights include articles on the threat of deepfakes, the potential of user-owned social media platforms, pornography literacy initiatives, investment in undersea cables, and the dangers of sharing DNA results online.<\/p>\n So, what\u2019s our conclusion? How healthy is the internet right now? It\u2019s complicated — the digital environment is a complex ecosystem, just like the planet we live on. There have been a number of positive trends in the past year that show that the internet — and our relationship with it — is getting healthier:<\/p>\n Calls for privacy are becoming mainstream. <\/b>The last year brought a tectonic shift in public awareness about privacy and security in the digital world, in great part due to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. That awareness is continuing to grow — and also translate into action. European regulators, with help from civil society watchdogs and individual internet users, are enforcing<\/a> the GDPR: In recent months, Google has been fined \u20ac50 million for GDPR violations in France, and tens of thousands of violation complaints have been filed across the continent.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a movement to build more responsible AI. <\/b>As the flaws with today\u2019s AI become more apparent, technologists and activists are speaking up and building solutions. Initiatives like the Safe Face Pledge seek<\/a> facial analysis technology that serves the common good. And experts like Joy Buolamwini, founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, are lending their insight to influential bodies like the Federal Trade Commission and the EU\u2019S Global Tech Panel.<\/p>\n Questions about the impact of \u2018big tech\u2019 are growing. <\/b>Over the past year, more and more people focused their attention on the fact that eight companies control<\/a> much of the internet. As a result, cities are emerging<\/a> as a counterweight, ensuring municipal technology prioritizes human rights over profit — the Cities for Digital Rights Coalition now has more than two dozen participants. Employees at Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are demanding<\/a> that their employers don\u2019t use or sell their tech for nefarious purposes. And ideas like platform cooperativism and collaborative ownership are beginning to be discussed<\/a> as alternatives.<\/p>\n On the flipside, there are many areas where things have gotten worse over the past year — or where there are new developments that worry us:<\/p>\n Internet censorship is flourishing. <\/b>Governments worldwide continue to restrict internet access in a multitude of ways, ranging from outright censorship to requiring people to pay additional taxes<\/a> to use social media. In 2018, there were 188 documented internet shutdowns around the world. And a new form of repression is emerging: internet slowdowns<\/a>. Governments and law enforcement restrict access to the point where a single tweet takes hours to load. These slowdowns diffuse blame, making it easier for oppressive regimes to deny responsibility.<\/p>\n Biometrics are being abused.<\/b> When large swaths of a population don\u2019t have access to physical IDs, digital ID systems have the potential to make a positive difference. But in practice, digital ID schemes often benefit<\/a> heavy-handed governments and private actors, not individuals. In India, over 1 billion citizens were put at risk by a vulnerability in Aadhaar, the government\u2019s biometric ID system. And in Kenya, human rights groups took the government to court over its soon-to-be-mandatory National Integrated Identity Management System (NIIMS), which is designed to capture people\u2019s DNA information, the GPS location of their home, and more.<\/p>\n AI is amplifying injustice<\/b>. Tech giants in the U.S. and China are training and deploying AI at a breakneck pace that doesn\u2019t account for<\/a> potential harms and externalities. As a result, technology used in law enforcement, banking, job recruitment, and advertising often discriminates against women and people of color due to flawed data, false assumptions, and lack of technical audits. Some companies are creating \u2018ethics boards\u2019 to allay concerns — but critics say these boards have little or no impact.<\/p>\n When you look at trends like these — and many others across the Report — the upshot is: the internet has the potential both to uplift and connect us. But it also has the potential to harm and tear us apart. This has become clearer to more and more people in the last few years. It has also become clear that we need to step up and do something if we want the digital world to net out as a positive for humanity rather than a negative.<\/p>\n The good news is that more and more people are dedicating their lives to creating a healthier, more humane digital world. In this year\u2019s Report, you\u2019ll hear from technologists in Ethiopia, digital rights lawyers in Poland, human rights researchers from Iran and China, and dozens of others. We\u2019re indebted to these individuals for the work they do every day. And also to the countless people in the Mozilla community — 200+ staff, fellows, volunteers, like-minded organizations — who helped make this Report possible and who are committed to making the internet a better place for all of us.<\/p>\n This Report is designed to be both a reflection and resource for this kind of work. It is meant to offer technologists and designers inspiration about what they might build; to give policymakers context and ideas for the laws they need to write; and, most of all, to provide citizens and activists with a picture of where others are pushing for a better internet, in the hope that more and more people around the world will push for change themselves. Ultimately, it is by more and more of us doing something <\/i>in our work and our lives that we will create an internet that is open, human and humane.<\/p>\n I urge you to read the Report<\/a>, leave comments and share widely.<\/p>\n PS. This year, you can explore all these topics through reading \u201cplaylists,\u201d curated by influential people in the internet health space like Esra’a Al Shafei<\/a>, Luis Diaz Carlos<\/a>, Joi Ito<\/a> and others.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"