East, MacKinnon wrote that "the Internet empowers people and helps to bring about the peaceful changes associated with the Arab Spring". In September 2010, MacKinnon became a Bernard L. Schwartz fellow at the New America Foundation. She is the Founding Director of the think tank's Ranking Digital Rights project which ranks the world's most powerful Internet, mobile, and telecommunications, companies on their respect for users' rights, with a focus on free expression and privacy. Wikimedia In January 2007, MacKinnon joined the inaugural Wikimedia Foundation Advisory Board, where she remained until December 2012. In September 2021, she joined the Foundation as its inaugural Vice President of Global Advocacy. Consent of the Networked MacKinnon's first book, Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom, was published by Basic Books in January 2012 and won the Goldsmith Book Prize. In an interview, she said that she argues in the book (among other things) that: We cannot assume that the Internet will evolve automatically in a direction that is going to be compatible with democracy. It depends on how the technology is structured, governed, and used. Governments and corporations are working actively to shape the Internet to fit their own needs. The most insidious situations arise when both government and corporations combine their efforts to exercise power over the same people at the same time, in largely unconstrained and unaccountable ways. This is why I argue that if we the people do not wake up and fight for the protection of our own rights and interests on the Internet, we should not be surprised to wake up one day to find that they have been programmed, legislated, and sold away. References External links Mackinnon's websites: RConversation (Rebecca MacKinnon's blog) Consent of the Networked (website for book) Organizations: Ranking Digital Rights Committee to Protect Journalists Global Network Initiative Global Voices Online New America Foundation (2010-) Center for Information Technology Policy (2010) Open Society Fellowship (2009) Journalism and Media Studies Center at the University of Hong Kong (2007–2008) Berkman Center for Internet & Society (2004–2006) 1969 births Living people American bloggers American human rights activists Women human rights activists Berkman Fellows Citizen journalism Harvard University alumni Internet activists People from Tempe, Arizona Wikimedia Foundation Advisory Board members American Wikimedians Wikimedia Foundation staff members