A collection of radical ideas for a truly more acceptable digital ecosystem

Aug 2, 2022

NB: By acceptable digital, I mean digital that is ecologically and socially sustainable, chosen rather than endured, emancipatory rather than alienating.

Ban targeted advertising and tracking. This alone would reshape the web. Just imagining it is genuinely energising!
Ban mechanisms rooted in captology, or attention-design techniques.
Draw up a list of digital services "of strategic importance for democracy", and make it mandatory for these services to let users choose how their algorithms operate. Concretely, this would mean forcing Google or Facebook to hand users the reins to choose how the results-ranking algorithm works for one, or the news feed for the other. Users could choose, for instance, to be more or less surprised, to see more or less volume, or to weight certain criteria over others.
Maintain open-source building blocks at the European scale for strategic, essential technologies that are costly to develop: a browser rendering engine (to offer a real competitor to Google's Webkit), a mobile OS (to offer a real alternative base to Android), and so on.
Make it mandatory for every digital service to publish a page detailing the algorithms it uses and their intent. Algorithmic transparency, finally.
Create a public inclusion agency. Its role would be to verify that public and private digital services are genuinely accessible (against criteria to be defined from existing standards), and that a simple, non-digital option for getting information or assistance is always available. It would have both an advisory mission and the power to sanction.
Ban lock-in mechanisms that trap users inside a service, and make simple, systematic data export mandatory in a format that's genuinely interoperable and usable. It should be easier to switch digital services. Apple, in particular, would have some things to worry about. Same for streaming services and their playlists. Same for EPUBs, which currently can't be transferred once they're DRM-protected.
Rethink intellectual property law to make the use of open licences more systematic. And why not go as far as copyleft by default?
Make it mandatory to trace the entire digital production chain, and require transparency on environmental and social impact figures. Researchers working on the life cycles of digital infrastructure need this transparency; it's high time they got it.
Make 10 years of software maintenance mandatory on the same piece of hardware. Let's be ambitious!
Make multiple user sessions mandatory on all digital devices. Concretely, you should be able to share a tablet or smartphone.
Give every citizen who wants one a free email address that respects their data. The details would obviously need working out, but relying on a selection of regional associations or cooperatives could be a good approach.
Multiply the budget of the CNIL (France's data protection authority) by X, and strengthen its independence. Its work is essential, but it's severely short on resources and political independence.
Create a right to internet access, and make high-speed access (ADSL or fibre) free for students and people in difficulty. This would help take the pressure off 4G networks, which, as a reminder, peak at 10pm, that is, when people are at home, not on the move!!
Organise how digital assets are handled when someone dies.
Collectivise the funding and maintenance of base infrastructure (cables, routers, etc.) as a commons, neither public nor private.
Give every citizen who wants one personal cloud storage that respects their data. Again, the details would need working out, but relying on a selection of regional associations or cooperatives could be a good approach.

That's it, this is an ongoing reflection, I'll keep feeding the list and include your ideas if you're willing! So, what would your own radical ideas be for a digital world that's genuinely more desirable?