A NewNet • Frank McCourt

Philanthropist and author of ‘Our Biggest Fight’, Frank McCourt sits down with Niki in the studio to lay out his vision for a decentralized internet. He shares why Project Liberty is focused on personhood online instead of data privacy, why a digital bill of rights is not the answer, and shares his optimism for technologists’ ability to build a better digital future. 

 “Let's re-decentralize the Internet so that we put people back in charge.” - Frank McCourt

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• Buy “Our Biggest Fight” here 
• Learn more about Project Liberty

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Transcript

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Niki: I'm Niki Christoff and welcome to Tech’ed Up. Today in the studio, I'm joined by businessman Frank McCourt, author of ‘Our Biggest Fight: Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity, and Dignity in the Digital Age.’ He's the founder of Project Liberty, a wide-ranging initiative focused on building a new decentralized version of the internet, and we break down how to turn his vision into a reality.

Frank, thank you for taking the time to come into the studio today while you're in Washington. 

Frank: Yeah, I'm happy to be with you. How you doing? 

Niki: I'm doing really well. 

You've joined us; we were talking right before we got started about the difficulties of governing in D.C., which might be a little bit of an understatement and very diplomatic of you.

Frank: [chuckles] Yeah, It's a challenging time, and I think we all kind of feel that and, and know that and whether you're, y’know, trying to govern as you say, or trying to raise kids. We're seeing that it's a very stressful time for parents because they're seeing changes in their kids.

The point I make in, in the book, ‘Our Biggest Fight’ is really, first and foremost, to shed light on Project Liberty and to encourage people to get involved because the underlying problem [long pause] issue here, I think, is the way the tech is being used. 

And it's not that the tech is inherently bad, or that the people building it are bad people. It's nothing like that. It's that we have gone from a decentralized internet, which was created by people who, who saw it as a great means to connect people, empower people, lift people up. And it's become a highly centralized, and autocratic, and surveillance-based technology. 

I think it's time we, kind of, just take a step back here and [00:02:00] address the flaws, uh, that are becoming more and more obvious to the current design and certainly do that before we make it more powerful [Niki: Yes] with generative AI. 

Project Liberty is pro-technology and technologists. It's pro-business. We believe strongly that technology can make people's lives better. The information now that these platforms have on us is so intimate, and so intricate, and so detailed that we're profiled. And that's something we'd never let our government do, have all this information. So, why would we let a few big companies have it?

The harms are real and the dysfunction is real and if we lose our ability to have a, y’know, a coherent society, and a strong democracy, and a healthy next generation, life will be very different for all of us.

Niki: So, I am of two minds and, and I think I, I let you know that I started working in Big Tech in 2007, which you reminded me was two years before the like button on Facebook, [Frank: That’s right, yep] which is something I had forgotten. And I feel like from that moment until now, it's clear to everyone, including in the industry, and I do think many people in the industry have their hearts in the right place.

I'm a little bit of a privacy hawk myself. I'm deeply concerned about democracy, but I also am conscious of the fact that there's a reason we've ended up with these few companies that are running everything, which is they're easy to use. It's easy to use their services. 

Now, to our detriment, and I've seen quotes about, “It's not just privacy that's invaded, it's our personhood.” So, I do wanna just really think through how you're thinking of motivating people to understand there's an alternative to the, highly centralized internet that we have today.

What's that alternative look like? What's the vision for it? And then, let's talk about also how the tech works and how individuals can sort of get engaged or get curious about this.

Frank:  Yeah, great. I mean, I'm, I'm really glad you used that word, personhood. in the book, I urge people every time they hear the word data think personhood because [Niki: mm-hmm] in, in this digital era that we live in, y’know, the internet is not going away. [Niki: No]  We're digital beings, right? Everything, virtually everything we do, is captured. When you have so much information about each of us, y’know, embodied in our social graph, what we're really talking about is not this dry abstract term data that just feels harmless, right?

It's, it's really our personhood that we're talking about. Why would we want somebody else to own our personhood? Shouldn't, shouldn’t we own ourselves? Which translates to, shouldn't we own our data and control our data? Because that's part of who we are!  Because the tech is such a big part of our lives, I'm talking about internet technology primarily when I refer to tech. How do we go about fixing it?

The insight that Braxton Woodham and Harry Evans had, who run our, our lab's team was really about creating a new protocol, a very thin layer, open source, that would work together with, y’know, TCP/IP, and, and HTTP, y’know, the first connected devices, the second connected data. 

What if rather than, y’know, being an IP address on the internet - [interrupts self] which is, y’know, Niki, you and I are not on the internet, our devices are, right? Which is odd to me, 40-some-odd years later, right? That we're still a device, not a person on the internet because this is so much part of who we are.

Let's, let's evolve the internet by adopting another thin layer protocol that puts us in control of us, us in control of our social graph. Let's think of this data that is being created every day as a, as a resource for all of us so that, y’know, we don't need to store it anymore in server farms of, of any big company. It can be stored in a decentralized way. Imagine all this information, sort of, being owned by everybody or nobody, depending on how you want to look at, except our social graph is within our purview.

We decide how to share our information or what portions thereof with others, y’know, for what purpose and on [00:09:00] what terms. So, imagine an internet where the apps that are built and the, the existing apps that transition are apps that are clicking on our terms of use for our data.

We're not clicking on the terms of use of a few platforms, essentially giving up our, our rights and giving up our personhood. So this is, this is the idea: it's to shift the power back to individuals, which was the intention of the internet when it was created, right? It was an empowerment device.

Think of data empowerment. And, instead of the conversations we're all having now in Washington and other places about data protection, let's shift it and think of it as, as “this information is really, really valuable, really important, when it's aggregated  and analyzed wisely, it can be really powerful at problem-solving and helping people.”  And let's, let's re-decentralize the Internet so that we put people back in charge.

Niki: I want to talk for a minute about the idea of only sharing what you need or want to share. So, this drives me completely nuts when I am mandated to overshare parts of my personhood with apps to use them. So, I'll give a really concrete example, but I think you can probably give examples, too. 

And we even have it in real life, right?

Why is my weight on my driver's license? I get it if they need to, y’know, find me and arrest me, but why do I have to show it to, [interrupts self] well, I never get carded anymore, but when I used to get carded, [chuckles] why did they need to know my address? They just need to know my birth date. So, you can put that into an online setting, Hulu, and I'm not just calling them out specifically, but I am, requires you to put your gender in.

I just signed up for Hulu, and I had to put it in my gender, and I'm like, “Why? Why does it matter?”  I don't really particularly want to share this with Hulu. I don't really need them to know my birth date other than I'm over 18 potentially, or over 13, depending on the laws. And I feel like - one of the things that bothers me is that I don't mind sharing parts of my data, but I mind having to overshare as a terms and condition of using something that doesn't really need that to serve me content. [Frank: mmmh]

Can you talk a little bit about that idea of data minimization? 

Frank: Yeah, I think it's a, I think it's a vitally important issue that you're, you're raising. I think it's way past time that we have you be a verifiable person. Y’know, on the internet, but being a verifiable person is very different than revealing everything about you, right? 

With the current architecture,  y’know, we, these platforms now know everything about us. So, there is no, there slicing and dicing and, y’know, having derivative information and only sharing the minimum.

We're, we have no privacy. These platforms are, are collecting hundreds of thousands of attributes about us. So, to know our age is, it's, it's, they know a lot more than our age [chuckling]

Niki: Well, and they can tell who you are, even though you're an IP address!  

Frank: And so, we've, we've kind of backed into this, this kind of architecture. It was a race to collect the data, and then we'll figure out how to make money. Let's keep people online. Let's learn about them. Let's target them. Let's feed them. At first, it was goods, right? It was advertising. And then, it became news and points of view. And then, it became ideas. 

It's really become very unhealthy, and I think you're right, it's not because we have a bunch of technologists that are trying to do harm to society.

I believe that, y’know, 99 percent of people in Silicon Valley and, and working for these platforms want a better world. They want to build cool stuff that helps people and so forth. We just have a, an architecture that turns out to be really harmful.

If I said to you, for instance, “Oh, I'm the head of the postal service and I have a really, I have a good idea. I'm going to deliver your mail for free.” You'd say, “Well, tell me a little bit more.” I'd say, “Well, yeah, I'm going to put a listening device and a camera [Niki: [chuckling] right!]  in every room of your home and in your car. And, y’know, in your workplace,” you'd probably be creeped out by that and, and then I'd say, “Yeah, but it's free.” And you'd say, “ I don't think so.” “Oh, one other thing, I'm going to open your mail, and I'm going to read it. I'm going to read, you know, your 13-year-old daughter's diary, and when I learn she's a little bit concerned about her weight or this or that, I'm going to feed her information to make her feel even worse about her weight. And then I'm going to sell her stuff. Okay?” Profit from that. So, it's It's creepy, it's unfair, and it's harmful.

And so, no one can convince me we can't do better than this. And this is just technology. It's just engineering. And we can fix it and put people in charge of their data and before we, before we, before we step into the next more powerful version of the same model, which is generative AI. I feel strongly that we should fix what's broken and then make it more powerful so that it can really, really help people.

Niki: So, I want to ask something. I think when you describe the idea of a post office, by the way, I'm still the last person on Earth using the regular post office because it does -  I, It serves a lot of my needs. I'm a post office super fan. 

So, when you talk about this concept of it being creepy, unfair, exploitative, and then when you bring kids in, right? Technologists and people in Silicon Valley have kids too, and there's a lot of distress over mental health issues, the attention economy, what's being collected. Y’know, I was, gosh, in my thirties before I had a smartphone, so [chuckling] y’know, I had a long period of time with having quite a bit of privacy in my, frontal lobe developing without apps and all of this.

So, I know there's a lot of concern, but I think people feel fatigue over how many issues they're concerned about, and they don't know what to do.

So, one of the things I know that you're talking about a thin, a protocol, a thin layer of tech that could sit on top of existing tech. And this would sort of break up the hyper-controlled authoritarian structure. But how does that work in practice? How do people get curious about it? Because one of the things about Amazon, let's say, or Facebook, is it's easy to use.

Everybody knows how to use it. Billions of people know how to use it and that's why even when someone has some discomfort potentially with feeding into this system, they use it because it's, it's easy. 

Frank: Yeah, well, we certainly don't want to build the next generation of this technology and make it not polished, or not fun.

Think of the, an evolved internet, this next generation, as being every bit as easy to use but just one where individuals are back in charge of their personhood, of themselves. An intranet where you log on to the intranet, you don't log on to an app. You don't have 40, 50 passwords. You're just you. Okay? And have a handle and you're on the internet now. Think of it as an internet where your social graph, your data is portable, and you can dole out pieces of it, not all of it, right?

You are in control again of what information you share and it is portable. You're not sharing it with one app, which is a walled garden and to talk to somebody else, they have to be on that app. The apps are interoperable.

By the way, just like phone numbers didn't used to be portable and the, [Niki: right] and the seven baby bells were not interoperable, well, guess what? Phone numbers are portable. Carriers are interoperable, and since 1996, when that became the way, two and a half trillion dollars of private investment in telecom, which, by the way, makes all of this high-speed internet possible to start with. 

So, I don't buy the argument that it has to be the way it is. I've seen it before. My family built a telecom company and,  starting in 1993, called RCN, and it was at a time when phone numbers weren't portable and we were able to go to people, go to elected officials, and say, “Hey, look, We're building it. This is what people are saying. They want their phone number,” and, and they got their phone number.

And I'm not saying we were the only ones that were advocating for that, but, but we were amongst those. And this was really important. It unleashed all kinds of innovation. So, social graph portability and the ability to control how much information you share. Apps that are interoperable. Apps that are clicking on our terms of use for our data  or portions thereof. So, the terms of usage are now in our control as individuals, not we're not giving up everything to these apps. The data stored in a decentralized way, but think of this globally accessible universal social graph where we control our data.

So now, everybody gets the benefits of the network effect, but with permission. So, you build something interesting, all of the social graph information is there, and people can say overnight, “You can have my information for that purpose.” You'll see a huge, huge wave, I believe, of innovation and new businesses and a, a fair sharing of the wealth.

Project Liberty is way more than a tech project, though, because in addition to putting forward some ideas about how to fix the problem, it also wants to engage social scientists and, and others. As we re-architect the internet, let's not just, you know, move fast and break things. Let's actually get it right this time. A third leg of, of, of Project Liberty is actually how do we, actually, bring a project to people's kitchen table.

And I think once people understand that they're not helpless, that this isn't hopeless, that there is a way forward here, I think, I think that brings energy. And that, that, that's the opposite of fatigue. I think people are incredibly resilient when they see light at the end of the tunnel. So, let's find the answers and let's put them forward and, and go build that. That's, that's the American way, by the way. 

Y’know, we're innovators here. We're creators. We're builders. So, let's build our way out of this. And I think it could be - and make it fun. 

Niki: Right!  So, this is, I don't; not to just hop on the word fun after you've said all these serious things, but I will say I got really excited about the idea of Mastodon, right? Like this sort of decentralized, a different kind of social network. I couldn't figure out which server to sign up for, so I signed up for one that looked cat adjacent, which turned out to be everything was in French. And I was like, “I can't figure this out.” I work in tech, I've got the time to figure it out, and I'm baffled by how to use it. And I just, sort of, gave up. I thought, “I love the idea of not having to go through these central points of authority, overshare things,” but I started to feel like these, these decentralized opportunities were hard to use.

And I guess this is your call to action, right? Bring people into Project Liberty. Bring in the technologists. The people who understand the user interface who can make it fun and usable because I would sign up for it if it were a little bit easier. 

That's your call to action. That's your ask on this podcast. 

Frank: Yeah, exactly. And first of all, a federated model like Mastodon is very different than a, a decentralized model. And all decentralization is not blockchain-based, right? DSNP is not tokenized [Niki: Right!] It's open source. And it is as low in the stack as you can get. It's right at the bottom with TCP/IP and HTTP. It's just adding another layer basically gets the user experience to be one that's person-to-person, not device-to-device.

But we still have the connectivity, the discoverability, and so forth that is, that is difficult in federated systems, right? Because it's just, yeah, I suppose having a hundred silos is better than having one. The, the power of the internet is the connectivity, right, and the ability actually to be discovered and to discover others.

Wow, how can you have an internet connecting billions of people and you haven't solved for identity? How can we be 41 years into this? TCP IP was 1983, and we're still an IP address on the internet. How does that make sense?

It doesn't to me. I mean, I'm, I'm sitting here, and I'm seeing a fork in the road, and one, one, one sign points left, and it says, “Follow the machines.” And one sign points right and it says, “Follow people.”

Somebody said something very interesting to, to me about the book, and they said, “Y’know, you've just, you've given people permission to talk about this.”

And I thought it was, I love the comment because it wasn't, I didn't write it necessarily to give people permission, but the fact that that person felt permissioned, that's empowering. Right? 

I'm not telling people anything they don't know in this book. They know it, and we feel it. 

Niki: In honor of your being in Washington DC, we have only one poll that ever matters, which is: “wrong direction/right track.” And I think right now, you're right, everybody can feel that this particular moment on the internet, we're going, we're headed in the wrong direction. Things don't feel right. 

What I'm hearing you propose is a thin technical layer that can work with the existing internet. You're not talking about blowing up the concept of the internet and tokenizing everything, and everyone has servers in their house, and they become completely anonymous or pseudonymous, and they have a tumbler that jumbles up [chuckles]  their IP address. You're talking about- 

Frank: [chuckles] That's not what I'm talking about. 

Niki: Not what you're talking about.!  Although on this podcast, we do talk about that sometimes, but the concept is different.

The concept is to work within capitalism, and democracy, and technology, and entrepreneurship, and have a civically minded mission that looks at what we all know to be true, which is things are not headed in the right direction. And comes up with solutions right now that are able for people to get excited about, curious about, and most importantly, hopeful about.

Did I recap it well? 

Frank: Totally. Recapped it beautifully well, and I, I would just, y’know, leave you with a thought that when you have something as powerful as this technology sitting side by side, y’know, our democracy. If I asked you to, to give me three words or phrases to describe democracy, I, I don't think you would pick autocratic, centralized, surveillance-based. [Niki: laughs]

Right? [chuckles] 

Niki: Right! [chuckling] A minimum security prison? 

Frank: Yeah. Either we're going to lose democracy as we've known it and move towards autocratic, centralized, surveillance-based type of state, or the technology has to better reflect our democratic principles. So, it needs to become more democratic, decentralized, open.

I do hear people saying, y’know, “We need a digital bill of rights.”  And I, and I, I say respectfully, “I, I disagree. I think we need technology that respects the Bill of Rights we already have.”

Niki: I love that. I'm for the Bill of Rights. I'm a super fan. I don't really think we need to adjust it that much, if at all, and we certainly don't need to replicate a whole new concept of our liberties that are the foundation of, of this country, but all, many democracies around the world that are under threat and this year face a pivotal point. So, we need to build. Build fast.

In honor of this book. I'm not going to link to Amazon to buy it. I'm going to link to an independent bookseller, a woman who used to work for me at Salesforce who moved back to Mississippi and started a, a little shop. So, we'll point to Emily's shop to buy it. 

Frank: Thank you. I really appreciate it. We don't have all the answers, but we think there's some valuable insight here in terms of framing this conversation as one not about tech per se, but this is about our personhood, life in the digital age.

I want to see things change. 

Niki: Well, thank you so much. I'm really grateful that you took the time to come in and shared this, and it's something for people to get curious, and excited, and optimistic about.