It's Our Web (If We Can Keep It)

Free Speech TV has launched the "It's Our Web" campaign, featuring a a short, entertaining animation explaining the dangers of media centralization and suggesting positive alternatives. "This is a truly pivotal time for the Internet, the most powerful and interactive medium humans have ever seen," says Steve Anderson, who produced the video. "New commercial incursions by big online media enterprises, including the widely disdained "Facebook Beacon," make explicit what new media giants have been doing quietly for some time; searching for new and evermore effective ways to sell our attention, our clicks and our private information to advertisers and marketers."

In addition to raising concerns about issues such as the threat to privacy from corporate manipulation and surveillance of the internet, FSTV also hopes to offer a solution, in the form of Free Speech TV's newly-launched non-profit, non-commercial online social networking community at http://community.freespeech.org. "Suddenly it feels like the Internet is being shaped to satisfy the demands of advertisers and marketers rather then us, the users," Anderson says. "We need to embrace Internet sites, services and tools that are more independent of this excessive and unnecessary obstruction to our online travels."