The Future of the Internet is at Risk

By Moira Whelan | June 14, 2024

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WSIS Panel

The future of the internet is at risk. Here’s what we’re doing to fix it.

Every year in Geneva, the various organizations that run the infrastructure of the Internet gather to exchange ideas and share challenges and best practices. The World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) took on new meaning this year as the future of a democratic internet is at risk. This reality was what drove NDI to participate this year, and why the WSIS will be a focus of our work over the coming year.

As NDI’s friend Konstantinos Komaitispoints out: “The original promise of the Internet was meant to reflect a structure where power would be dispersed, making room for more democratic and fair participation. A decentralized technology, the Internet was supposed to negate any center of control and reject any attempt at concentrating power. And, for the most part, this design choice ensured an open technology, where voluntary participation and open standards would be core to the way it would evolve.” The annual convening is based on this concept but it hasn’t quite turned out that way. The concentration of power in the internet governance system is driving a series of meetings that could change who is in charge of the internet. NDI just completed a slide deck that explains it all in simple terms. We invite you to share it with your networks in what is a critical year for the future of the internet.

That’s why at WSIS this year, “multistakeholder” was the name of the game. Governments, civil society, the private sector, academics, and the technical community joined the ITU and other UN agencies to discuss the current state of internet governance, decisions being made about the Global Digital Compact, bridging the digital divide, ensuring a free fair, and interoperable internet, and the acceleration of AI’s use without regulations or guardrails.

I had the honor of chairing a mainstage panel made up of regulators who spoke about the critical need that small states have to scale new technologies like 5G. They talked about the sharing of best practices being critical to saving lives…like when Poland was able to quickly scale their bandwidth to accommodate the 1 million people that crossed the border from Ukraine in just 10 days.

NDI also presented the findings of the meeting we hosted in Kenya this April of the Global Partnership for Action on Gender-Based Online Harassment and Abuse. At the core of this conversation was the opportunity to advocate for an inclusive internet that has a framework that would create a pathway for coordination action to prevent and disrupt potential democratic rollbacks.

NDI’s deep engagement in internet governance is based on our approach outlined in Influencing the Internet, which explains the challenges and provides recommendations for improving internet governance to enable democracy. NDI is also a proud founder and manager of the Open Internet for Democracy Initiative(OIDI) which builds a network of open internet advocates who champion the democratic values and principles that should guide the future development of the Internet. The Leaders program, a non-residential fellowship part of the OIDI, works to elevate the voices of emerging experts on internet governance individuals from across the Global Majority. NDI is also a proud member of the Global Network Initiative, a multistakeholder community that protects freedom of expression globally.

The focus of NDI’s efforts remains empowering our partners with the tools and resources they need to do their work, but at the core of that is ensuring our partners have access to an internet that enables democratic movements. A free, open, and democratic internet is at risk this year with multiple international fora and efforts by authoritarian actors to use them to rewrite the rules. NDI will spend the next year empowering partners to understand this challenge and engage with one another and government stakeholders to continue to build the #InternetWeWant.

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