So, Who Controls the Internet Now?

A Review of Wu and Goldsmith's 2006 Book

Imagine it’s 2006. The iPhone hasn’t been born, Twitter is just learning to squawk, and Mark Zuckerberg is still deciding if “The Facebook” should let non-college kids into the party. Along comes Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World by Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu—a book that crashes the cyber-utopian rave to remind everyone, “Hey, the adults are still in the room, and they have passports, lawyers, and a scary amount of jurisdiction.”

Goldsmith and Wu’s central thesis is this: the internet was never going to be the lawless Wild West that early tech libertarians promised. Sure, John Perry Barlow wrote a fiery Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace¹, but Goldsmith and Wu show that governments were never going to let the internet be some international Burning Man. Countries like China, France, and even the U.S. quickly started flexing their regulatory muscles. Want to run a website? Great—just remember that if you tick off a local government, their legal reach can extend to your shiny server farm across the world faster than you can say “DNS lookup.”

The Power of Global “Unwritten Laws”

One of the most fascinating points Goldsmith and Wu made—and one that remains even more relevant today—is how the “local” often becomes “global” through regulatory osmosis. The internet may be borderless, but the rules shaping it often aren’t.

Take California, for example. The state’s environmental regulations are so strict that car manufacturers don’t just build one version of a car for California and another for the rest of America. No, they build California-compliant vehicles for everyone. Why? Because it’s easier to meet California’s standards across the board than to create fifty different emissions models. This is how a single state can nudge the entire country into greener territory without ever writing a national law.

Europe, meanwhile, has turned its obsession with privacy into an exportable legal framework. GDPR didn’t just influence European companies; it forced global tech giants to rewrite their privacy policies and data handling practices worldwide. If you’ve ever had to click “I accept cookies” while trying to read an article about, say, raccoon mating habits, you have Europe to thank.

This phenomenon—where powerful jurisdictions create de facto global norms—shows that control isn’t always about firewalls or brute force. Sometimes, it’s about being the biggest regulatory bouncer at the party. And as the internet becomes more intertwined with international commerce and politics, these “unwritten laws” feel less like suggestions and more like the gravitational pull of a planet-sized legal system.

Confessions of a Tim Wu Fan

Before deeper into who’s running the digital show today, let me admit something: I am a full-fledged Tim Wu disciple. The kind of fan who read The Master Switch and didn’t just nod thoughtfully, but started carrying it around like a sacred text, ready to quote passages at anyone who dared romanticize tech monopolies. Wu’s idea of the “cycle”—how every communication technology, from radio to cable TV to the internet, eventually falls under the grip of monopolies—was the intellectual equivalent of being unplugged from the Matrix.

And yes, I met him. Back in 2017, at a cybersecurity conference, I spotted him like some people spot their favorite actor in a crowded restaurant. I managed to blurt out something only slightly less embarrassing than “Your books changed my life!” He smiled in that polite, professorial way, probably thinking, “This guy might be one firewall short of a security breach.” But still, it was a moment. Since then, I’ve imagined a world where Tim Wu, with his thoughtful yet ruthless clarity, is running the show. Honestly, we’d all probably have fewer data leaks and better net neutrality.

So, Who Controls the Internet Now?

1. Big Tech Oligarchs (a.k.a. “The Digital Lannisters”)

Forget nation-states for a second. Google, Amazon, Meta, Apple, and Microsoft have their own kingdoms—complete with private armies of servers and algorithms that know more about you than your therapist. They don’t just control information; they curate, optimize, and monetize it. When Facebook (sorry, “Meta”) changes its algorithm, entire industries panic. When Amazon blinks, global supply chains twitch. If governments are the adults in the room, these companies are the spoiled teenagers who took over the house while the adults were distracted.

2. Governments (still grumpy, still in charge)

Goldsmith and Wu’s big point still holds: governments never really lost control. Sure, they’ve had to adapt their methods. China’s “Great Firewall” has evolved into a cyber-Mount Everest, while the EU has turned privacy regulations (GDPR) into a weapon of mass confusion. The U.S. still plays sheriff, wielding antitrust lawsuits and occasional “friendly” chats with CEOs that feel like mob negotiations. And if you think laws can’t touch the internet? Ask TikTok how its ongoing saga with the U.S. government is going.

3. The Algorithmic Gods

We’ve entered a strange new era where “control” is exercised not just by human decisions but by opaque, self-optimizing algorithms. These digital oracles decide what videos go viral, which tweets die in obscurity, and which conspiracy theories end up in Uncle Bob’s newsfeed. The internet might be global, but your experience of it is now algorithmically tailored—like a dystopian choose-your-own-adventure book you didn’t consent to.

4. Hackers, Trolls, and the Shadows

Let’s not forget the decentralized mischief-makers. State-sponsored hackers, cybercriminals, and anonymous collectives keep reminding us that “control” is never absolute. They slip through firewalls, ransom hospitals, and occasionally bring down corporate giants just to prove they can.

If Goldsmith and Wu wrote a sequel today, they wouldn’t just ask, “Who controls the internet?” They’d ask, “Who owns reality?” Social media has blurred the lines between truth and hallucination. AI-generated misinformation has turned “seeing is believing” into a quaint relic. And billionaires treat entire platforms like personal vanity projects (looking at you, Elon).

In 2006, Goldsmith and Wu’s point—that governments ultimately call the shots—was spot-on. But in 2025, it feels like governments are still trying to play poker while Big Tech, AI, and algorithms are running an entirely different game—something between quantum chess and 4D Monopoly.

1. John Perry Barlow wrote “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” in 1996 as a bold, almost revolutionary manifesto responding to the U.S. government's attempts to regulate the internet (notably the Telecommunications Act of 1996).

Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and lyricist for the Grateful Dead, declared that cyberspace was a new realm beyond the reach of traditional governments and their laws. He argued that the internet was a self-regulating domain where freedom of expression should reign, free from censorship and control.