“As It Turns out, Code Is Not Law at All,” Olivier Sylvain (Fordham)

In this talk, Olivier will build on arguments he's made in a chapter from his forthcoming book, Reclaiming the Internet, as well as a book chapter on "Middleware and the Illusory Promise of End-User Control" in the recent ANNALS volume on "Platform Governance" (eds. Tracey L. Meares & Sudhir Venkatesh). Below are the respective excerpts from the two.

Reclaiming 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. Reclaiming 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.

Concerned about the power that social media now wield, a chorus of tech-minded reformers have called for a return to the internet’s foundational design principles of interoperability and end-user control. This group argues for “middleware”—online tools like browser extensions and consumer-facing protocols that would enable people to take control of their online experiences across the web. This article argues that the campaign for middleware is laudable but mostly speculative and inapposite. It proceeds on the disproven theory that consumers can control their online experiences in today’s networked information economy. As such, it distracts reformers from solutions that would redress the structural asymmetries that define today’s market for consumer-facing services, including social media. This article argues that it is time to give up the illusory promise of user control and attend above all to enacting enforceable restrictions on service designs and commercial surveillance practices.

Olivier Sylvain is a professor of law at Fordham University and a senior policy research fellow at Columbia University's Knight First Amendment Institute. His research is on information and communications law and policy. His most recent writing, scholarship, commentary, and congressional testimony are on online intermediary liability, commercial surveillance, and artificial intelligence. His forthcoming book, " Reclaiming the Internet: How Big Tech Took Control—and How We Can Take It Back," will come out in March 2026. In Dec. 2025, the ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science published his book chapter, "Middleware and the Illusory Promise of End-User Control." The National Science Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation have awarded him grants to support this work. He was a senior advisor to the Chair of the Federal Trade Commission from 2021 to 2023.

Olivier teaches Legislation & Regulation, Administrative Law, Information Law, U.S. Data Protection Law and Privacy, and information technology related courses. He is a member of the Council for Responsible Media and on the Academic Advisory Board of the Open Markets Institute. He has served on a range of boards, as a president and a member. 

Before entering academia, Olivier was a Karpatkin Fellow in the National Legal Office of the American Civil Liberties Union in New York City and a litigation associate at Jenner & Block, LLC, in Washington, D.C.