The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom- Evgeny Morozov

Published: 2011

Pages: 428

Growing up as a kid in the 90s, I remember when the Internet was once promised to make the flow of information open and free. In the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, this technology seemed to have the capability to unite humanity and topple even the most oppressive of regimes by providing the common person with an overwhelming influx of information. Yet, over the past decade or so, the conversation around the digital landscape has shifted towards censorship and control. The Internet, while certainly bringing together previously disparate communities, has also served to empower and organize white-supremacists, Neo-Nazis, and terrorist organizations. Far from acting as a catalyst for radical revolution, the Internet is often more popularly used as a vehicle for vapid entertainment and coarse, often disturbing Youtube comments and wild Twitter rants. It seems that rather than being a tool of unquestionable liberation, the Internet has also served to bring real, physical harm to many of those who utilize it (whether they be children who are cyber-bullied or political dissidents who are tracked through their online activities to be arrested or killed.)

In his book, The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, Belarusian author and fellow Harvard collegue Evgeny Morozov argues a similar point: rather than blindly treating the Internet as purely a force for democratization, we must also be aware of the unintended consequences of the technology we create, and how it is often used to support authoritarian regimes. Named as one of the 28 most influential Europeans by Politco in 2018, Morozov, in this 2011 work, seeks to correct what he describes as a tendency for Westerners to adopt an attitude of “cyber-utopianism,” which is a “naive belief in the emancipatory nature of online communication that rests on a stubborn refusal to consider its downside,” which finds its roots in the digital fervor of the 90s. (xiii).  At its core, the book’s thesis is actually quite simple: “To salvage the Internet’s promise to aid the fight against authoritarianism, those of us in the West who still care about the future of democracy will need to ditch both cyber-utopianism and Internet-centrism. Currently, we start with a flawed set of assumptions (cyber-utopianism) and act on them using a flawed, even crippled methodology (Internet-centrism). The result is what I call the Net Delusion” (xvii). Instead, Morozov calls us to be attentive to the dangers of the Internet, as well as to pay attention to local contexts in order to utilize the Internet accordingly in each geopolitical context.

To support his argument, Morozov is particularly fond of using the failure of the Iranian Green Movement in the summer of 2009 as a case study, making note of the ways in which Western reporting of the event (deeming it a “Twitter Revolution” due to its purported usage in protest organization) diverged from what was actually happening on the ground (as he notes, there were less than 20,000 Twitter users in Iran on the night of the election).  Far from recognizing that the necessary conditions of revolution- namely, a universally discontented working class, a powerful political class, etc.- simply weren’t there, bloggers, journalists, and even officials in the State Department instead championed the emancipatory power of the Internet to liberate the masses. These leaders failed to recognize that the Iranian government could use photographs, cellular data, personal connections (via Facebook), and mass texting to identify and target dissidents while simultaneously stirring counter-revolutionary sentiments. By ignoring these aspects, Morozov argues, the West’s  hyper-optimism regarding the nature of Internet connectivity and human nature leads us to be “deaf to the social, cultural and political subtleties and indeterminacies” of a particular geopolitical context.  In short, Morozov believes that many policymakers in the West are overly-confident in the role of technology in democratization, primarily due to the use of such technology at the end of the Cold War in 1989. Policymakers thus confuse correlation with causation, and thus tend to pursue policy without taking into full consideration the potential dangers that the Internet poses in the hands of authoritarian governments.

Morozov’s argument becomes most compelling when he begins to investigate the various ways in which new media is used by “the masses” within more authoritarian regimes, primary as a mode of entertainment or social validation. Echoing the complaints of Kierkegaard, Adorno, and a wide array of thinkers in the Frankfurt School, Morozov decries the rise of “slackivism,” in which users conflate online activity with actual, materially-driven progress (an easy charge in our current Twitter-thread-driven online “activism”).  While he is right to critique the ways in which the political left often uses social media and streaming services for passive entertainment, Morozov gives no compelling case for why such forces have not seemed to deter neo fascists and nationalists from persecuting and harassing ethnic minorities online. While the Huxley-Orwell dichotomy is helpful in framing the debate (whether we are a society enamored and overwhelmed by information or a society that is controlled andefined by invasive bureaucracies, respectively), Morozov emphasizes that regimes can be a mix of both, as governments can simultaneously overwhelm us with content while censoring dissenting perspectives.

One critique that has often been levied against Morozov’s thesis is that it is ultimately a pessimistic and sardonic take on the role of technology in modern democratic societies. In typical Eastern European fatalistic fashion, Morozov can often come across as a bit of a pessimist when it comes to policymaking in the West. While he is quite correct in assessing our often overly-optimistic stance when it comes to Internet freedom, Morozov fails to give a positive vision of what a constructive form of policy-making might look like. To be fair, I don’t believe that this was his intention in the first place. The Net Delusion, far from offering a rival theory, only attempts to show that the current perspectives we possess are no longer sufficient. It urges us to rethink our own biases and to produce an entirely new paradigm that refuses to essentialize the internet as either wholly good or bad. Instead, Morozov wants us to realize that the Internet is not only a technological object, but a cultural one as well, and that all of our discussions about the consequences of the Internet are subject to cultural analysis. I believe that he wants the reader to occupy a space between these two poles: to neither wholly praise the Internet as a liberator of the masses nor decry it as an oppressive tool that allows authoritarian regimes to customize their censorship. Living between these two extremes is difficult and it, in my opinion, has the potential to create a paralysis in policymaking. Yet, this is the call that Morozov gives to us: to understand that “the world around us is the product of a complex interplay between social and technological factors” as we refuse to give in to either utopian or dystopian attitudes when it comes to crafting lasting and beneficial policies.

In short, this book serves as a careful (if a bit overstated) reproach to the ways in which we Westerners take the Internet for granted, often overlooking it’s more dangerous undersides. Morozov reminds us that the Internet is not a neutral good: it is a tool for both organizing revolution and promoting authoritarian powers. He reminds us that the policies we make always have unintended consequences, but we must be willing to admit our mistakes in order to learn, grow, and craft better policies for the complex and intertwined world in which we live. We all make assumptions off of flawed models of reality. We all have our presuppositions and biases. We also need to have the bravery to admit our own blind-spots. Overall, this work, as pessimistic as it may seem at first glance, serves as a timely reminder to correct our overly-optimistic attitudes toward the Internet, it’s frustrating malleability, and its complex and ever-changing role in shaping our democracy.