Six takeaways from Project Liberty's Summit
Last week, 500+ leaders in technology, policy, civil society, finance, and media descended on Washington, D.C. for Project Liberty’s Summit on the Future of the Internet. The two-day event provided an opportunity to chart a new course toward a digital future where people have a voice, choice, and stake in a better web.
Through Project Liberty’s partnership with POLITICO, the summit was live-streamed (and you can watch a recording here for Day 1 and here for Day 2). We wanted to share six key takeaways from an incredibly rich and varied array of conversations that took place among the attendees:
// Takeaway #1: The new internet is already here—and it’s built around you.
There was a recognition at the summit that the next generation of the internet is already here—it just needs scale to reach the masses. The summit took place at a critical inflection point, as the public is now more aware of the challenges and issues present online than ever before. Users are flocking to new platforms like Bluesky, whose CEO was one of many participants in our discussions. Policymakers in dozens of states are writing bills and passing legislation. New technologies are giving users greater control.
Joe Lubin, the co-founder of Ethereum and the founder/CEO of Consensys, provided a window into the fast-moving space of the decentralized web and its new business models. “Web2 continued the business model from the 20th century,” he said. “This business model of an organization offers as little as possible and extracts as much as possible from their consumers—an adversarial relationship. Web3, by being based on open protocols, will now enable us to create a user-centric web, and this feels like the natural business model of the web going forward.” At the summit, Project Liberty, Consensys, and Frequency announced a partnership to develop infrastructure for a more people-centered internet.
// Takeaway #2: It's time to focus on solutions.
In his opening remarks, Project Liberty’s President, Tomicah Tillemann, said “With tech that is already operating at scale, achieving a people’s internet over the next four years is not only possible, but probable. With your help, it can become inevitable. We all know the internet is broken. On behalf of the next generation, we need the people in this room to fix it.” Doing so will require us to stop admiring the problem and focus on solutions. These include:
- Building interoperability by giving people more options to navigate and control their data through online spaces;
- Designing new economic models so individuals can participate in the value they create;
- Passing new laws to mandate portability of personal information, including social graphs;
- Strengthening online privacy;
- Scaling open-sourcing digital infrastructure; and
- Providing people with better alternatives to today’s incumbent platforms, like decentralized tools and technology.
// Takeaway #3: Your data is you.
A central theme of Project Liberty’s Summit was the role of data in empowering individuals to reclaim control over their digital identities. Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s Cyber Ambassador-at-Large,and an advisor to Project Liberty Institute, spoke about “selective disclosure” technology, or tools that allow people to disclose just a part of their identity on the web. “The great hope is to think of this as public infrastructure,” Tang said, where open-source technologies can be adopted by other countries and jurisdictions.
We’re in the midst of a renaissance of tech innovations around data ownership: from Project Liberty’s Frequency blockchain to new models like data commons and data trusts. Sylvie Delacroix, the Inaugural Jeff Price Chair in Digital Law at King’s College London, presented her work to launch the first data trust pilot worldwide in 2022 through the Data Trusts initiative. Matthew Prewitt, the President of the RadicalxChange Foundation, highlighted their work with Serpentine around Partial Common Ownership of art, as a new model for collective ownership of digital assets.
At its heart, The People’s Bid to acquire TikTok reimagines our relationship with data, leveraging new technology to restore users’ control over the data that rightfully belongs to them.
// Takeaway #4: To transform the internet, we need scale.
Building a better internet won’t happen through disconnected pilots or small-scale efforts. It requires, as Project Liberty’s founder, Frank McCourt, said, a million “Davids” fighting against the Goliath of big tech. To reach this kind of scale, we need new economic models, new incentive structures that go beyond hypergrowth, and new types of governance that share the economic value that’s created.
To imagine a different economy, Project Liberty Institute released the report “Towards a Fair Data Economy: A Blueprint for Innovation and Growth.” Drafted by the Fair Data Economy Task Force, a group of 18 distinguished leaders from over 10 countries (including Daron Acemoglu, who recently won the Nobel Prize in Economics), the Blueprint outlined four pillars to transform the economy:
- Entrepreneurship and new business models
- Next-generation digital infrastructure
- Policy innovation and frameworks
- Strategic capital allocation
// Takeaway #5: We need better policy and leadership from the public sector.
From speakers to breakout sessions, the summit kept returning to a key theme—the leadership that policymakers and government officials must play in shaping the future of the internet. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D - Minnesota) spoke at the summit on Day 1 (watch here) and emphasized the role of government. She said, “If you believe in economic liberty, you cannot just have everything controlled by a few giant companies, and think that everything is going to work out just fine.” This has been what the internet has become in recent years, but it doesn’t need to be the internet’s future. From greater antitrust regulation to federal laws surrounding privacy, Klobuchar outlined a way forward.
Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R - Washington) spoke about how her work to advance data privacy is personal, with three school-age kids at home. With our online data being collected, manipulated, and exploited, “It is important that Congress act in order to protect our individual privacy rights online,” she said on a panel, highlighting her work to pass a privacy bill.
Project Liberty also unveiled its latest Policy Blueprint to guide policymakers on digital governance. This Policy Blueprint is designed to give the incoming Administration and legislators across the US actionable, high-impact, and nonpartisan policy solutions to transform the internet.
// Takeaway #6: This is not just about tech. This is about reclaiming our liberty.
“We the people have become the largest unpaid workforce in human history.” These were the words from Zoe Kalar, the Founder of the social media app WeAre8 where advertisers pay the users to advertise (WeAre8, Project Liberty and Frequency just announced a collaboration to integrate Frequency into WeAre8). She’s one of many leaders who participated in the summit who are shifting the balance of power from corporations to individuals and giving everyday people an economic stake in their digital lives. “Humanity has been in an abusive relationship with the technology that enslaves us. Now it’s time to break free.”
Frank McCourt built on this idea as he shared his closing remarks: The collective work to build the next generation of the internet is not just a tech project, he said. Instead, it is something far more profound; it’s about reclaiming our agency, our autonomy, our liberty. It’s about tapping into what it means to be human. By fixating too much on the tech, we might miss the bigger picture of what it means to be citizens in the digital age, and we might miss the opportunity before us to practice our self-determination.
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In newsletters in the coming weeks, we’ll be exploring some of the big ideas that emerged from the summit in more depth. For now, check out the recordings from Day 1 here and Day 2 here.
