From the beginning of Ben Tarnoff’s Internet for the People, the reader is made viscerally aware of what comprises “the internet”: a planetary system of wires, deep-sea cables, and server-filled warehouses. As intangible as it often seems, these are objects made from steel and plastic. Reading it feels physical, because it is. As an infrastructural project, the internet mirrors a familiar trajectory in Western economies over the past four decades — funded by the state, built by workers, and sold off on the cheap to corporations for profiteering.

Throughout the book, these notions are built on. In a detailed but accessible way, Tarnoff gives a thorough explanation of where the internet came from, as well as why and how it has become what it has become. From its days as a public research network to its current status as the vanguard of neoliberalism, Tarnoff describes the creep of privatization up the “stack.” Under the guidance of canny venture capitalists, the physical infrastructure of ocean-floor cables and broadband networks were sold off and corporatized, with (as we take for granted today) internet access becoming something with a price tag attached. Only after that process was guaranteed could the activity of logging on be monetized in the interests of profit.

Alongside the economic seizure of digital space, the other process that Tarnoff highlights is the ideological shaping of the internet by the forces of the Right. Hard-line libertarian ideology, for instance, informed the outlook of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar when shaping the e-commerce venture’s key features and processes. Ku Klux Klan grand wizards were early to recognize the web’s potential to communicate their ideas to a much wider audience, while the modern far right goes to great lengths to take up as much space as possible in the social media ecosystem. Its presence on sites like Facebook (where Breitbart, Fox News, and Ben Shapiro frequently top the most-shared linked posts) and YouTube can attest to this.