“The fatal error is ours. Legislators set out a regulatory regime that keeps regulation at bay. The only other industry with a similar protection is the gun industry.” — Olivier Sylvain

There are certain words in book titles that provoke. “Reclaiming”, for example. My guest today is happy to defend the provocation. Fordham law professor and former FTC senior advisor Olivier Sylvain argues in his new book, Reclaiming the Internet, that the internet was never really ours to begin with—and that the story about user control, free speech, and digital democratisation was always more nostalgia than reality.
But Sylvain’s argument in Reclaiming the Internet: How Big Tech Took Control—and How We Can Take It Back is not the usual big-tech-is-bad narrative (yawn). He doesn’t blame the companies. He blames us—or rather, Congress. The fatal error, he says, was Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, passed in 1996, which created a blanket immunity from liability for companies trafficking in user-generated content. The only other industry with comparable legal protection, he says, is the gun industry. That immunity enabled the attention economy’s business model. Infinite scrolling = infinite advertising = infinite profit.
What follows from that error is now everywhere: autoplay, algorithmic recommendation—design features engineered to hold your attention, not to facilitate free speech. Sylvain insists these companies aren’t really platforms. They are, instead, services delivering content pursuant to their bottom line. And now the same Nineties playbook—innovation, user control, free speech—is being replayed with AI. Companies are deploying chatbots before they’re ready, racing each other to market. A young man killed himself after a Gemini chatbot told him to and Google invoked the First Amendment in its defence.
The fix, Sylvain argues, is not to abolish Section 230 but to attend to the business model itself: data minimisation, purpose limitations, and the kind of product-safety regulation that every other industry—from automobiles to toys to food—already accepts. I should disclose that my wife runs litigation at Google, so I’m all too familiar with the counter argument. But Sylvain makes a persuasive case even if his reclamation project is still a little too Rousseauean for my Hobbesian taste.

Five Takeaways
• The Fatal Error Was Ours: Section 230 created blanket immunity. The only other industry with comparable protection is guns. That legal shield became big tech’s business model.
• These Are Not Platforms: They’re services engineering your experience—infinite scroll, autoplay, algorithmic recommendation—to hold attention and serve the bottom line.
• The Same Mistake Is Happening with AI: Companies deploy chatbots before they’re ready. A young man killed himself after Gemini told him to. Google invoked the First Amendment.
• Data Protection Is the Real Fix: Data minimisation and purpose limitations would dampen the incentive to engineer addiction without touching free speech.
• Bipartisan Consensus—but Only for Children: Courts are rejecting Section 230 defences. But the consensus only extends to kids. A 36-year-old just killed himself after talking to a chatbot.
About the Guest
Olivier Sylvain is a professor of law at Fordham University, a former senior advisor at the FTC, and a Senior Policy Research Fellow at Columbia’s Knight First Amendment Institute. His new book is Reclaiming the Internet (Columbia Global Reports).

References
Reclaiming the Internet by Olivier Sylvain: https://www.amazon.com/Reclaiming-Internet-Tech-Took-Control_and/dp/1967190127
Tim Wu on platform capitalism: https://keenon.substack.com/p/why-the-real-road-to-serfdom-runs

About Keen On America
Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States.
Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow

Chapters:
00:00:00 Introduction: What does “reclaiming” the Internet mean?
00:03:06 The layered stack: pipes, platforms, and consumer-facing apps
00:06:01 Was user control ever real? The ideology of the nineties
00:09:32 The fatal error: Section 230 and blanket immunity
00:14:51 Facebook as punching bag—and why Sylvain doesn’t blame the companies
00:17:31 Addiction, self-harm, and the design features that hold your attention
00:22:00 The attention economy and the Gonzales v. Google case
00:26:35 How we can take it back: data minimization and purpose limitations
00:29:02 “These are not platforms”
00:31:21 Europe, the First Amendment, and the right to be forgotten
00:33:06 AI business models: Anthropic vs. OpenAI and the recklessness of deployment
00:39:38 Ralph Nader and the case for product safety online