Recovering the Internet: How Big Tech Took Control?and How We Can Take It Back

How the Internet lost its way—and how to fix it

Recovering the Internet is an indictment of how Big Tech cloaks ruthless commercial exploitation in the language of free speech. Olivier Sylvain, a leading legal scholar and former senior advisor at the Federal Trade Commission, exposes the incentives behind social media design, revealing how they trap users in cycles of addiction, misinformation, and harm—from fatal TikTok challenges to AI chatbot codependency.

With clarity and urgency, Sylvain dismantles the libertarian mythology that shaped internet law and calls for a new legal regime that protects users over platforms. Recovering the Internet is a powerful, original intervention into the most urgent policy debate of our time—what it will take to reclaim the digital public sphere.

Olivier Sylvain is a professor of law at Fordham University, a former senior advisor at the Federal Trade Commission, and a Senior Policy Research Fellow at Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute. An expert in communications, administrative, and internet law, his work focuses on platform accountability, consumer protection, and the intersection of technology, speech, and democracy. He lives in New York City,