Can the internet be reclaimed from Big Tech?

The long-standing perception of the internet as a "digital town square" is a libertarian myth that has allowed Big Tech to evade accountability for societal harms. Olivier Sylvain, a professor at Fordham Law School and author of *Reclaiming the Internet*, argues that the idealism of the 1990s led to legal frameworks like Section 230, which grants platforms broad immunity for user-generated content. While this immunity fostered the growth of social networks and the gig economy, it also enabled the spread of misinformation, hate speech, and addictive product designs by allowing companies to harvest data and sell attention without internalizing the negative externalities. To correct this power imbalance, Sylvain proposes narrowing Section 230 protections, implementing comprehensive federal data protection laws similar to those in the EU, and requiring algorithmic transparency. These reforms are particularly urgent as the same libertarian arguments are now being used to shield the development of AI from necessary regulation.