“We are fast approaching a crisis point where the failures of the present hyper-corporate, relatively unregulated model of the internet are having severe, detrimental impacts on public communication. We are at a proverbial fork in the road. One route leads an ever deeper downward spiral into digital dystopia: hyper-surveillance, predictive technology working hand in hand with authoritarianism, disinformation overload and proliferating online divisiveness and hatred. The alternative route is a more-regulated internet where accountability matters, guided by a commonly assented ethics of public culture. “Is this alternative possible in an era of winner-takes-all partisanship and corporate greed so vast that it is literally interplanetary in its ambitions? I fear not, but if we are to be civic optimists then it is the only possible hope, and we have no alternative but to say ‘yes’ to a better digital future and to become digital activists who collectively work to make it happen.”