Our 5 Most-Read Articles of 2025

We’re taking a short break over the holidays to spend time with our families. Before we go, we want to say thank you for reading, subscribing, and joining us on this journey.

We accomplished a lot this year, we published more than 50 articles: one every week. I joined as Editor-in-Chief, and together we’ve grown our subscriber base by nearly 40%, hosted our first event, launched a paid offering and a bookshop, and expanded our contributor community. Three of those contributors appear in our top five most-read posts this year, which feels like a pretty good measure of what this publication is becoming.

Out of everything we published in 2025, these five pieces were the most read. While we’re away, we’re resurfacing them in case you missed them, or want to revisit what resonated most with readers this year.

Thank you for being part of Internet Exchange. Happy holidays, and we’ll see you soon.

5. Europe’s Digital Sovereignty: Is the Political Will Ever Coming?

By Tara Tarakiyee

Eight years after Europe declared digital sovereignty a political priority, the gap between ambition and reality has only widened. Despite repeated commitments and mounting dependence on US technology firms, Europe continues to underinvest in the infrastructure and policies required to make sovereignty more than a slogan.

4. If It Breaks Wikipedia, It’s Probably Bad Policy

By me! Audrey Hingle

Bad internet policy has a tell: it assumes every online service is a profit-driven platform with data to monetize and users to manage. When those same rules start to break Wikipedia, a volunteer-run nonprofit that doesn’t sell ads or harvest personal data, something has gone wrong.

3. Big Tech Redefined the Open Internet to Serve Its Own Interests

By Burcu Kilic and Mallory Knodel

The internet was built on open standards, interoperability, and the idea that no single actor should control how people connect or communicate. “Open” once meant decentralized systems governed in the public interest. Today, Big Tech uses that same language to defend platforms that are anything but: closed, centralized systems built around surveillance, data extraction, and market dominance.

2. Why Feminists Must Defend Encryption

By Mallory Knodel

The debate over encryption is often reduced to a false choice between online safety and privacy. This framing obscures how essential secure communication is for women, queer people, and gender minorities who rely on encryption to seek help, organize, and protect themselves from abuse and surveillance. (If you like that post, you’ll love our upcoming event.)

1. The Dog That Caught the Car: Britain’s ‘World-Leading’ Internet

By Heather Burns

Our most read post this year was by Heather Burns, a Glasgow-based "tech policy wonk" who advocates for policy and technology that keeps the internet open, globally connected, secure, and trustworthy. She’s been Extremely Online since 1994.

The UK’s Online Safety Act was sold as a “world-leading” child-protection law, she writes, one that would make Britain a model for the rest of the world. Instead, it has normalized the idea that governments can bolt identity checks and surveillance layers onto the internet, then call the result “safety.”

From the Group Chat 👥 💬

This week in our Signal community, we got talking about:

Following the Online Safety Act, which introduced age verification for adult content on mainstream platforms despite well-documented privacy and security risks, the UK government is now reportedly “encouraging” Apple and Google to introduce device-level nudity controls. Under the proposal, iOS and Android would use nudity-detection algorithms to block the display, creation, or sharing of nude images unless users first verify that they are adults, potentially via biometric checks or official ID. While ministers say the measures would be voluntary for now, officials have already explored making them mandatory in the future. The approach closely mirrors one of the NSPCC’s policy asks.

This Week's Links

Internet Governance

• Bernie Sanders’ call to halt data centre construction is a warning about an AI boom that’s enriching Big Tech while pushing the environmental, financial, and social costs onto local communities explains Steven Render, ED of MediaJustice. https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenrenderos 
• Joseph Gordon-Levitt is launching the Creators Coalition on AI, calling on artists and digital creators to band together against the unethical business practices of big AI companies before they reshape entire creative industries on their own terms. https://journal.hitrecord.org/p/announcing-the-creators-coalition 
• Daphne Keller argues that if “publicly accessible” data under the DSA is defined too narrowly, platforms could once again block the very research the law was designed to enable. https://www.techpolicy.press/how-the-meaning-of-publicly-accessible-shapes-researcher-data-rights-under-the-dsa 
• As AI chatbots increasingly replace traditional search engines, a new AI Forensics report warns that existing EU rules leave dangerous gaps in oversight, and calls for anticipatory governance to address the unique risks of AI-powered search. https://aiforensics.org/work/governing-ai-search 
• A new CDT workshop highlights how embedding human rights into technical standards will require institutional change inside standards bodies, not just good intentions or high-level principles. https://cdt.org/insights/embedding-human-rights-in-technical-standard-setting-institutional-change-and-governance 
• The UK can turn convening power, technical expertise, and industry influence into lasting global leadership on frontier AI governance: without waiting for new legislation write Dr Imogen Stead and Dr Jess Whittlestone. https://www.longtermresilience.org/reports/advancing-the-uks-global-leadership-in-frontier-ai-governance 

Digital Rights

• India’s proposed SIM binding rules would force messaging apps to work only when a specific SIM card is physically present in a device, tying digital access to a fragile, easily lost phone number. As MediaNama explains, this approach risks breaking essential communication for people in crisis, prepaid users, workers, and families—without meaningfully stopping fraud. https://www.medianama.com/2025/12/223-real-world-use-cases-sim-binding-restricts-nama 
• The US Government intends to force visitors to submit their digital history and DNA as the price of entry. With this much data AI tools will likely be deployed to unlock details of your life for border and immigration agencies. https://privacyinternational.org/news-analysis/5713/trump-administration-wants-your-dna-and-social-media 
• Developers of apps like Signal or WhatsApp that use end-to-end encryption to protect private communications could be considered hostile actors in the UK. https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/creating-apps-like-signal-or-whatsapp-could-be-hostile-activity-claims-uk-watchdog 

Technology for Society

• Apps like OpenAI’s Sora are already fooling millions of users, and even mainstream news outlets, into believing AI-generated videos are real, despite warning labels. The result is a flood of believable but fake videos that are widely treated as real, prompting racist abuse, moral outrage, and attacks on marginalized groups. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/08/technology/ai-slop-sora-social-media.html
• Creative Commons’ CC Signals project aims to rebuild trust in the digital commons by giving creators new ways to signal how their work should be used in AI development, while preserving openness and reciprocity. https://creativecommons.org/2025/12/15/cc-signals-what-weve-been-working-on 
• A conversation with Tech Global Institute’s Sabhanaz Rashid Diya explores how prosocial design frameworks rooted in Western values often fail the Global Majority, and why responsible tech must account for collective rights, local context, and power differences across the world. https://www.prosocialdesign.org/blog/prosocial-design-values-in-the-global-majority-a-pro-social-recap 
• Data & Society’s Democratizing AI for the Global Majority series examines how AI systems built in the Global North can reproduce colonial power dynamics, and why centering local knowledge and community agency is essential for a more just technological future. https://datasociety.net/points/democratizing-ai-for-the-global-majority 
• As the tech industry accelerates AI development and data centre expansion, a new Data & Society report argues that meaningful climate action will require moving beyond corporate sustainability metrics toward worker organising and community-led resistance that confronts tech’s environmental harms head-on. https://datasociety.net/library/turning-the-tide/
• At a WSIS+20 side event, digital and AI financing was reframed as a question of public value, equity, and global economic justice, not just innovation investment. https://itforchange.net/wsis20-side-event-financing-digital-innovation-ecosystems-majority-world 
• APC welcomed WSIS+20’s renewed commitment to human rights and multistakeholder internet governance, while warning that without inclusive, accountable financing for digital development, global digital inequality will only deepen. https://itforchange.net/wsis20-side-event-financing-digital-innovation-ecosystems-majority-world 

Upcoming Events

• The Strategy Design Festival is a one-day, highly interactive event for organisations that want strategy to be a shared, living practice, not a document on a shelf. January 20. London, UK. https://www.fabriders.net/strategy-design-festival 
• Protocols for Publishers are meeting to discuss how we can preserve an open, equitable web, where no one company holds the keys. Feburary 4-5. London, UK. https://protocolsforpublishers.com/pfp-london-dates-and-early-speakers 

Careers and Funding Opportunities

United States

• Salesforce: Senior/Lead Applied Scientist, Responsible AI. Palo Alto, CA. https://careers.salesforce.com/en/jobs/jr298047/seniorlead-applied-scientist-responsible-ai 
• Roblox: Senior User Researcher, Safety. San Mateo, CA. https://careers.roblox.com/jobs/7441541 
• The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law: Technology Policy Strategist, Liberty and National Security Program. New York, NY. https://brennancenter.applytojob.com/apply/7G4Zjj3md0/Technology-Policy-Strategist-Liberty-And-National-Security-Program
• Gates Foundation: Deputy Director, AI Infrastructure for Education. Seattle, WA. https://gatesfoundation.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/Gates/job/Seattle-WA/Deputy-Director--AI-Infrastructure--US-Education-Data-_B021318-1 
• Microsoft: Responsible AI Assessment Lead. Multiple Locations, US. https://apply.careers.microsoft.com/careers/job/1970393556640371 
• Google. Multiple Locations, US. 
  • Curriculum Manager, Trust and Safety. https://www.google.com/about/careers/applications/jobs/results/139208565045764806-curriculum-manager-trust-and-safety
  • Learning Design Manager I, Trust and Safety. https://www.google.com/about/careers/applications/jobs/results/74802118090728134-learning-design-manager-i-trust-and-safety 

Global

• The European AI & Society Fund: Programme and Grants Officer. Brussels, BE. https://apply.workable.com/nef/j/C4F49A6EB5 
• UCL:  Funded PhD Project, Designing user reporting tools for online social platforms. London, UK. https://www.findaphd.com/phds/project/designing-user-reporting-tools-for-online-social-platforms/?p192806 
• GovAI: Summer Fellowship 2026, Research Track. London, UK. https://www.governance.ai/post/summer-fellowship-2026-research-track 
• The AI Security Institute: Research Scientist, Open Source Technical Safeguards. London, UK. https://job-boards.eu.greenhouse.io/aisi/jobs/4721474101 
• ICO.: Principal Policy Adviser - AI Policy. Multiple Locations, UK. https://ico.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/en-GB/ICO/job/Wilmslow-Cheshire/Principal-Policy-Adviser_JR676 
• Access Now: Platform Engagement Coordinator. Multiple Locations, Hybrid. https://accessnow.bamboohr.com/careers/229 

What did we miss? Please send us a reply or write to editor@exchangepoint.tech.