Privacy advocate Mozilla has published its first Internet Health Report during a year marked by major shifts: net neutrality rules are being rolled back, and Facebook’s CEO has testified before the Senate over failures to protect user data.
Mozilla highlights concern about a small number of companies that wield outsized power and influence over how the internet functions. Many readers will immediately recognize Western examples such as Google, Facebook and Amazon. In China, Mozilla points to large players like Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent.
The report shares the story of Chris Hartgerink, a Mozilla Fellow and PhD candidate in statistics at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. In 2014 he chose to stop using Gmail and moved to ProtonMail’s encrypted email service. He found the decision socially awkward: friends thought the move was extreme, and that social pressure made opting out of mainstream services more difficult.
“This social aspect just made opting-out of these services even more difficult,” Hartgerink said. “I’m sure it would have prevented others from making the same decision.”
Facebook illustrates the problem well. Repeated polls show it is among the least trusted major tech firms, even before the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Yet people continue to use it because so many of their friends, family and communities are on the platform.
This concentration of market power undermines competition and innovation and can enable questionable practices to persist. Mozilla warns that the situation may worsen as dominant platforms expand into advanced fields such as artificial intelligence, creating barriers that make it harder for smaller companies to compete.
“If no search engine can ever challenge Google, and no local apps can ever gain a sustainable market share, the opportunity promised by a free and open Internet erode,” Mozilla wrote. Open-source alternatives to social platforms, like Diaspora and Mastodon, exist but remain niche; they may only prove a concept unless people can more easily move their data between services.
Another priority in the report is safety — or rather the widespread lack of it. The internet has already seen websites that collect feeds from unsecured IoT security cameras, exposing private footage to public view.
IoT devices are projected to surge — estimates put the number near 30 billion by 2020, doubling from 2015. Cameras are one visible example, but other connected devices such as fitness trackers reveal intimate details about health, daily routines and location. Even a smart vacuum can leak information about a home’s layout.
Risks extend beyond the home. Connected systems such as elevators, vehicles or urban infrastructure could be hijacked, and attacks on critical systems like traffic lights could cause widespread disruption. The potential harm from compromised infrastructure is significant.
With relatively few experts working on AI and machine learning, the report raises concerns that deployed systems may reflect biases and fail to represent diverse populations. The tech industry, particularly in Silicon Valley, remains disproportionately dominated by white men. Studies have shown that facial recognition systems, for example, perform worse on women and people of color than on white men.
“Diversity in the tech industry is a huge issue across the board, but existentially important regarding the social and political impacts of AI,” said Meredith Whittaker, co-founder of the AI Now Institute. “We need to worry about the types of control possible when a small, homogeneous set of actors are responsible for technology that is influencing the lives of billions of people.”
Mozilla also flags the spread of misinformation as a pressing issue. While the phrase “fake news” is widely repeated, the phenomenon has tangible consequences, including voter manipulation. The report points to Cambridge Analytica’s controversial use of Facebook data as an example of how data-driven tactics can influence political outcomes.
The report recounts an investigation that traced thousands of fake news stories to a town in Veles, Macedonia. There, young entrepreneurs built dozens of English-language websites to generate advertising revenue. They covered topics from sports to health, but the most lucrative content focused on sensational political stories — particularly those about Donald Trump. Exploiting social media dynamics, these websites profited from the attention economy: clicks produced ad income, which encouraged more articles targeted at high-engagement topics.
Mozilla’s assessment is stark: the internet is not in a healthy state. Addressing the full range of problems — monopolistic power, security weaknesses, biased AI systems and the spread of misinformation — will be a substantial undertaking.
What’s required is careful regulation that protects users and public interest while still allowing innovation to flourish. Freedom of expression must be preserved, but society must decide where to draw the line to prevent harms. Achieving that balance is complex, and current approaches have so far fallen short.
The full Internet Health Report is available from Mozilla for those who wish to read the complete assessment and recommendations.
What are your thoughts on Mozilla’s first Internet Health Report? Let us know in the comments.
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