"Reclaiming the Internet from Big Tech"

How the Internet lost its way and how to fix it ? Abstract: Professor Olivier Sylvain will present his recent book, Reclaiming the Internet: How Big Tech Took Control—and How We Can Take It Back, published by Columbia Global Reports, in March 2026. He will show how Big Tech frames their commercial practices in the language of free speech. The book describes the incentives behind social media and other consumer facing services' design, revealing how they hold users in cycles of addiction, misinformation, and harm—from fatal TikTok challenges to AI chatbot codependency. Professor Sylvain critiques the libertarian mythology that has shaped information technology law. The blame, he argues, falls to policymakers, judges, and, to some extent, scholars. He calls for a new legal regime that protects consumers over platforms. This conference is an original intervention into the most urgent policy debate of our time: what it will take to reclaim the digital public sphere? More about the book: NPR (US National Public Radio) segment and Tech Policy Press podcast Speaker: Professor Olivier Sylvain, Fordham Law School Moderator: Professor Céline Castets-Renard, University of Luxembourg Speaker's Bio: Olivier Sylvain is a Full Professor of Law at Fordham University. His research is on information and communications law and policy. His most recent work, awarded by National Science Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, is on the regulation of consumer-facing online services like social media, commercial surveillance, and artificial intelligence. He was a Senior Advisor to the Chair of the Federal Trade Commission from 2021 to 2023 and a Senior Policy Research Fellow at Columbia University's Knight First Amendment Institute. Olivier is on the Council for Responsible Media, as well as a member of the Advisory Board of the Tech Justice Law Project and the Academic Advisory Board of the Open Markets Institute. He has served on a variety of boards, including the ACLU of New York and the Future of Privacy Forum. Before entering academia, Olivier was a Karpatkin Fellow in the National Legal Office of the American Civil Liberties Union in New York City and a litigation associate at Jenner & Block, LLC, in Washington, D.C. Venue : University of Luxembourg Campus Kirchberg - Weicker Building Room B 001 (Round floor) 4, rue Alphonse Weicker, L-2721 Luxembourg Language : English Organised by