Online platforms and the protocols that power them are indispensable to everything we do today. Three decades ago, policymakers laid the groundwork for what was to come—but they didn't get everything right. This talk presents the steps policymakers can take to put everyday people at the center of tech. 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 the topics of online intermediary liability, commercial surveillance, and artificial intelligence.Sylvain has been awarded grants from the National Science Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and served as a senior advisor to the chair of the Federal Trade Commission from 2021 to 2023. He currently teaches Legislation and Regulation, Administrative Law, Information Law, U.S. Data Protection Law and Privacy, and information technology-related courses. Before entering academia, Sylvain 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. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx