In Mr Patrick Daniel’s second lecture as IPS’ 11th S R Nathan Fellow for the Study of Singapore, he addressed the rise of the Internet, how it has revolutionised the global media landscape, and the pressing need to improve on Internet governance going forward.
While the Internet is the most far-reaching invention the world has seen and has brought a whirlwind of benefits, its darker side has reared its head, argued Mr Daniel. From wilful misinformation and online falsehoods to data theft, online fraud and cybercrime, much more attention must be paid to the issue of Internet governance. This should be undertaken in a balanced and collaborative manner focused on maximising the “digital dividends” of the Internet and minimising its risks to society.
The Rise of the Internet
Mr Daniel traced the advent of the Internet to the pervasive shift to digital computing and communication technologies as well as the unprecedented integration of multiple technological capabilities. Apart from transforming human communication, the Internet also created a boom in new opportunities for businesses. During the “dot-com” era of the late 1990s, Internet-related companies proliferated and their stock prices soared.
The dot-com bubble burst in 2001 and many Internet companies went bust, though the strongest ones survived, adapted their practices and competed in a new Web 2.0 economy. Mr Daniel cited Google, Amazon, eBay and Facebook as pioneers of the time.
Citing recent data from Statista, Mr Daniel argued that the Internet continues to have a tremendous impact on the global economy: Three out of five of the world’s population were Internet users in 2021, a number that is expected to rise to four out of five people in 2030. The biggest Internet companies now also have massive market capitalisation, with Google’s parent, Alphabet, being valued at nearly US$1.4 trillion in February 2021.
The Internet’s Darker Side
Mr Daniel highlighted two key features of the Internet — the open nature of its architecture that allows free access, and its largely unregulated nature.
Mr Daniel pointed out that Section 230 of the 1996 United States Communications Decency Act has given platform owners remarkable blanket immunity — companies based in the US such as Google and Facebook are not responsible for third-party content. This makes it difficult for them to be regulated. Self-regulation by Internet companies themselves is also almost non-existent, he said.
But the Internet’s open and unregulated nature has led to rampant abuse by bad actors, Mr Daniel said. He outlined two major manifestations of the Internet’s darker side. First, the proliferation of wilful misinformation on Internet platforms. He cited the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, where Hillary Clinton was accused in a Twitter post of operating a Satanic child sex ring in a pizza restaurant in Washington D.C. Although this claim was eventually discredited, the post was widely shared on social media and on Twitter, which Mr Daniel suggested may have swayed voters in the 2016 US presidential election.
“Here, we come up against the afore-mentioned Section 230. On the one hand, you have one actor who has absolute freedom of expression, and on the other hand, a platform that has complete legal immunity,” said Mr Daniel, pointing out that the author of the original Twitter post was not held responsible under the law.
He also pointed out how the rampant use of bots in facilitating the viral spread of misinformation and inflammatory content, as well as algorithm-based targeting, have created echo chambers among conspiracists, extremists and other polarised groups.
Apart from this, other scams, fraud and cybercrime have also become commonplace on the Internet, said Mr Daniel. He highlighted, as a case study, the digital advertising market where fraud is now a major problem.
He noted that the rise of the tech giants was powered by digital advertising — it now accounts for a whopping 98% of Facebook’s revenue and 80% for Google. Citing writer Tim Hwang, he said digital advertising is “the beating heart of the business of the Internet” and that “it is impossible to think about the future of the Internet without thinking about the future of advertising”.
Mr Daniel said Statista estimates that advertising fraud will hit US$100 billion by 2023, or 17 per cent of global digital advertising. “This is a colossal amount of fraud,” he said. Ad fraud was as high as 50% in programmatic advertisement buying. This is where advertisers pay website owners for digital space to serve advertisements to users through a computerised ad exchange that uses a real-time bidding system. This brilliant system has been ruined by fraudsters who set up fake websites and use bots to spoof the presence of readers on their websites. Other examples of ad fraud include domain spoofing and click fraud.
“When no one is policing the system, stakeholders have little incentive to fix the problem,” argued Mr Daniel. He called for all stakeholders in the digital advertising ecosystem to collaborate towards fixing the issue of fraud and set best practices for the industry. He also suggested educating the long tail of small advertisers, who account for 60% of digital ad spending, on the pitfalls of digital advertising.
The Future of Internet Governance
In the final part of his lecture, Mr Daniel moved to the broader issue of Internet governance, which he said is one of the most pressing public policy issues of our time, and the sooner we dealt with this difficult issue, the better. He argued for a balanced and collaborative approach — one which involves not only government stakeholders but also industry and civil groups. He stressed that this is necessary to rebuild trust in the Internet ecosystem and to safeguard against broader harm to wider financial and economic systems.
Mr Daniel cited the 2016 "One Internet" report by the Global Commission on Internet Governance, which said the current Internet “will not be the Internet of the future” and outlined three possible future scenarios for the Internet.
First, in the worst-case scenario, cyberspace would become dangerous and broken. The Internet would break down due to the malicious actions of criminals combined with inadvertent effects of government regulation, leading to people abandoning the Internet and a failure to harness its full potential.
The second scenario depicts some users reaping a disproportionately larger share of “digital dividends”, while others are permanently locked out, resulting in uneven and unequal gains, but the world muddles along.
The third and most ideal scenario is one of broad unprecedented progress. Internet-enabled technologies such as driverless cars and blockchain technology would flourish, while governments and industries would act collaboratively to manage the risks of online activity and ensure that the Internet benefits all individuals.
But this ideal scenario would require “universal agreement to collectively develop a new social compact” on the Internet. Mr Daniel was not optimistic that this could be achieved. “Just the geopolitics alone will scupper any attempt to achieve this,” he said.
Mr Daniel posited that the future would likely be a jumble of all three scenarios. “What this unfortunately means is that Singapore will have to chart its own way forward, guided by its own circumstances. In doing this, it must strive to get what the report terms the ‘maximum digital dividends’, through well thought out Internet governance.”
Concluding his lecture, he reiterated his call for a balanced, multi-stakeholder approach to Internet governance. In the same vein, he also recommended for Singapore to stay focused on building an Internet that is open, secure, trustworthy and inclusive for citizens and residents.
Question-and-Answer Session
Moderator Dr Carol Soon, Head of the Society and Culture Department and Senior Research Fellow at IPS, began by asking Mr Daniel about the fundamental principles that should underpin Internet governance. Mr Daniel responded by reiterating his concluding remarks: The Internet needs to remain open, secure, trustworthy and inclusive of all. What is difficult, however, is bringing people round to accept some degree of surveillance and policing in exchange for a more secure and trustworthy Internet.
Several questions centred on regulation, such as if regulations should target big tech companies, or if they should target protecting our youth, who appear to be more vulnerable to the Internet’s harms. For big tech platforms, Mr Daniel felt governments would have to work with big tech platforms to establish country-specific guidelines, given different countries’ ideologies and values. On youth-centred regulations, he pointed out that the necessity of rules to protect the young is an area of consensus, regardless of one’s position on the political spectrum. To this, Dr Soon added that it is important to keep the intended outcomes of Internet regulation and governance in mind when drafting policies.
One participant asked Mr Daniel about whether he felt China’s Internet regulations were an attempt to achieve “Internet balance” within China, or if they were draconian measures as often portrayed by the West. Mr Daniel did not have an opinion on the draconian nature of such measures, but posited that President Xi Jinping’s Great Firewall would make it difficult for future leaders to open up the Internet for China, or for China to build an inclusive global Internet for all.
On what an “inclusive Internet” means, Mr Daniel said he simply meant anybody who wants to access the Internet should be able to do so. Dr Soon added that in addition to physical access, inclusion also encompasses individuals’ ability and competency to use technology to enhance their economic and social mobility.
Returning to a theme of Mr Daniel’s first lecture, Dr Soon asked about how the legacy media could maintain its lead in the trust gap between them and news in aggregated environments such as social media. Mr Daniel responded that the media should make trust a guiding value, such as ensuring that reporters behave ethically and pay attention to being factual in news reporting.
Finally, Dr Soon pointed to the emergence of new or entrepreneurial media, such as in Australia where media entrepreneurs serve “news deserts” or communities not well served by legacy media outlets. She asked if Singapore could encourage and nurture independent, smaller players in similar ways. Mr Daniel supported the idea, though he stressed the importance of also ensuring that journalists in such ventures are well-trained and uphold professional journalistic standards.
Click here to watch the video of lecture II.