# "Surveillance Capitalism Won. IPFS Shows How We Win Back the Web", - Michelle Lee, IPFS - Channel: [Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress](https://streameth.org/ethereum-cypherpunk-congress) - Date: 2026-01-09 - Duration: 14:48 - Topics: web3, privacy, now, crypto, cryptography, blockchain, data, security, human right, rights, tech, technology, internet, open source, free, freedom, ethereum, hackers, ethics, cypherpunk, dev, developer, dapp, decentralization, bitcoin, computer, surveillance, cyber, peer2peer, p2p, love, solidity, zk, zero knowledge, education, academy, w3pn - Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-lcs2pvcbakI - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcs2pvcbakI ## Description In this Privacy Academy interview, Michelle (Mosh) Lee from IPFS Foundation breaks down what IPFS really is, why it matters, and how it’s reshaping the web. She explains how content addressing and peer-to-peer networking make the internet more resilient, how IPFS is used today (from scientific datasets to authenticating humanitarian video), and why surveillance capitalism makes privacy literacy essential for everyone. Michelle also reflects on building tech for governments, the political reality developers now face, and what it takes to design tools that give real agency back to users, not monopolies. Timecodes 00:00 – Intro: Who is Michelle (Mosh) Lee & what the IPFS Foundation does 00:21 – What IPFS is: censorship-resistant, resilient, content-addressed web 01:01 – How IPFS works: content fingerprinting, trees, verification, peer-to-peer retrieval 02:00 – Why it matters: authenticating data, preventing tampering, efficient distribution 02:48 – Real-world use cases: humanitarian video evidence, scientific datasets, open social networks 03:37 – What builders can do with IPFS: self-certifying systems, user-controlled apps 04:26 – Giving power back to users: decentralization vs. Web2 consolidation 05:00 – What everyday users can do: understanding surveillance capitalism & data trails 06:00 – Privacy literacy gaps: cookies, OAuth, data retention, corporate extraction 06:52 – Her work on civic tech: messaging tools for governments → broader participation 08:00 – Tech as a tool for good or harm: shifting responsibilities of modern builders 08:46 – Navigating today’s politics: resilient infrastructure and policy-aware tech 09:21 – The future: blending open-web values with privacy-first design 10:14 – Subcommunities & agency: tools for the small-scale, human-scale web 10:59 – Lessons for builders: early adopters vs mainstream; convenience must equal safety 12:07 – UX evolution: optimizing systems, not individual engagement metrics 13:00 – Final thoughts & closing ... This conversation is part of Privacy Academy Interviews – a peer-to-peer knowledge project exploring the most important ideas in Web3, privacy, and digital freedom. Learn more: https://academy.web3privacy.info/p/interviews A W3PN Media House production. Directed by Federico Marchi https://x.com/BabyBitProd Interview by Peter Farbey https://x.com/0xfarbey Let privacy be with you! ## Transcript I'm Masher Michelle Lee, director at the IPFS Foundation. >> Hi Mosh. >> Hi Peter. >> Happy to see you here. So for people who don't know you, can you tell a few words about yourself and what you do? >> Sure. Uh my name is Mosh or Michelle Lee. I'm director at the IPFS Foundation. Um and uh before that I was at Protocol Lab. So, IPFS uh is a 10-year-old project. It started initially to be a a censorship resistant, resilient, open way to share um publish and share information across the internet. Since then, we've noticed that people have used its building blocks to make all sorts of things across web two and web 3 and um uh yeah, really built around the idea of um content address building blocks and peer-to-peer networking. >> That is beautiful. Can you expand more on IPFS like how it emerged and how is it going on? >> Yeah. Um so when there is so much information being passed around the web I think uh you know trillions and trillions of um of files data points you know um nodes across the public and private networks. Um IPFS um is this idea that uh information should be efficient. that should be resilient. And so right now if you download a file, it gets a file. You give it a file name and then you can never find it again. You have to download the, you know, ninth copy of that PDF. >> Yeah. Especially if you don't name it yourself. >> Should be smarter than that because we know the contents of that file are the same. So we should be able to give you the same thing or be able to fetch it from your neighbor instead of fetching it from a server in Virginia or server in Berlin or wherever. Um and so IPFS introduces this idea of content fingerprinting. Um it's been used in other systems like git as well. Um but IPFS takes that and and uh basically build the tree of your entire data set or your entire file, gives unique fingerprints at at every level. And so you can use those to compose um subsets of your data or verify parts of your data um and just give you much more reliable ways to um to address data. And now once you have those more reliable ways to address data, it means you can verify uh a software distribution. It means you can check that data sets haven't been tampered with. It means that you can, you know, um compose uh um compose files from lots of different sources and then the the verification or the certification lives with the data instead of them. And you also mentioned that people build on you as well something, right? what are the examples like what what is possible? >> So we work um we collaborated with a group called uh the Starlink framework of data integrity and they use IPFS to um timestamp and authenticate video testimony of uh humanitarian events around the world. We also have scientists who use IPFS to manage scientific data sets um and uh and and provide more reliable references to them. Um uh and the building blocks of IPFS are also used in um open social networks uh like blue sky. >> Okay. And who I mean you can address to people and say like oh come do something with us or or on us like uh what are those people and what can they possibly do as well like >> yeah well in the past it's in it's funny inside my own career in technology we've seen this arc from like uh very hands-on accessible participatory um building through the consolidation of control uh a of big tech and um what the movement that we're part of is is trying to bring control and um an agency back to users, builders, developers. So with IPFS components, you can build um applications where uh the controller authority doesn't rest with a central service or a business, but that that um where the authority or verification sits a lot closer to the data. And so you can make self-certifying systems um whether it's for social or identity or you know large scale computation um and have that data be more portable across networks and across systems. >> Yeah, we at three privacy now we totally support this movement towards like being more agent and having more agency and like owning things. Um, what do you think like average user can do like to have more agency like in in general in web two and web 3 lives? >> Um, >> like besides IPFS like maybe tools or behavior like how to be more private and conscious on web in general. >> Um, let me try to think and and frame it a little bit. Um I think the first thing uh people can do is to be more educated about surveillance capitalism all the ways that our information data is tracked and then sold and shared um across large large scale companies. So um understanding what a cookie is, understanding what uh what loginins do, understanding what ooth, you know, what kind of data is shared at every kind of login or um or account creation um and then uh understanding data retention, you know, how how different services you opt into retain your data. >> 100%. Can you recommend any maybe educational resources, videos, books, whatever on the topics that will enrich this understanding? >> Oh man, >> I think what you're built is is not helpful. >> Oh yeah, thank you. But we have a web privacy academy. We have a course just in case you don't know uh privacy 101. We expand on that. [clears throat] >> Yeah. Okay. [laughter] >> I don't I don't feel like there's a I don't have a good like a good single resource. >> Yeah. Yeah. That's problem. That's why we actually made this academy and we made this one one course in privacy because there is so many information privacy but it's so scattered. Yeah. >> It's like everywhere and there is now a single point of entry for them. >> Yeah. Um yeah, I I mean I think what people should know is to start from a foundation of understanding that these large corporations are um they're stealing our attention and our history um and monetizing that. So they're taking capital value that we've created our our digital footprints and then combining it at tremendous scale to kind of extract value from you know all of the user base. So um you know once once you understand that then it becomes um then it becomes much more compelling to be more privacy conscious because um not only do you do you not want to be monetized against your will and against your participation um but you also you know want to avoid the surveillance that comes with that. >> Yeah. Um I read somewhere that you were uh doing some sort of messaging for a government. >> Yeah, correct. Right. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Can you expand on that? Like what's that and how does it work? >> Yeah. Um well uh I mean governments are are one entity that has to communicate with its resident citizens on like the largest scales possible, right? And um in the 2010s I think we we're still living in this era of techno optimism and so technology can facilitate things make everything smoother and better. Um in the United States there's a tradition of public participation that happens primarily in person in the evenings you know 6 p.m. on a weekday a lot of people can't get there and participate and so as a result you have a skewed um >> very skewed representation where only people who have the free time and resources get their voices represented. So, it's like parents of young kids aren't there, people who have to work can't get there. >> Um, and so, >> um, a lot of the public officials were saying, "We we know there are different voices out there. Can you help us, um, consolidate them and and reach people?" And so, we've built, uh, interactive text messaging systems for uh, governments to ask user, uh, you know, ask ask residents like where should we put this new resource or you know, how should we build this new bike share system? Um and it did end up getting much more representative in participation. Um so I think you know technology is a is just a tool. It's an accelerator. Um it can be used for good. It can be used for bad. Um and I think now as builders we need to be especially conscious that it can be used for all sorts of purposes but probably some motivation. [snorts] >> Well yeah considering politics nowadays [laughter] do you think what do you think we can do still because it's getting harder and harder right? uh to build resilient infrastructure. >> Uh what do you think is the way to kind of oppose this like right swing we are having now? I think um I think technologists need to understand that we're part of a complex system that you know technology is shaped by policy policy shapes technology and then all of those are shaped by people's voices and demands and and um and their presence and so um building technology now is very different than building technology 20 years ago when we thought all technology was was going to make humanity more efficient and more empowered. I think we have to understand um how to work with collaborate with as well as you know challenge uh these systems of policy and authority so that we're ultimately creating better societies. >> Speaking about better societies, so uh imagine the web of your dream. >> Mhm. which is like I know private secure u whatever uh decentralized >> like in some distant future um how would it look like and how would life look like in this like ideal circumstances? >> Um to me online life is a reflection or extension of uh in person life. It's it to me they're not you know parallel realities. They're they're kind of along a spectrum of the same. And we have um the tradition, you know, the the culture behind uh privacy first. Sorry, I'm going to back up a bit. Um it it's really interesting that there's a shared community um and a lot of shared ethos between people who are privacy advocates for the web and also advocates for the open web. So, how can these two seemingly um uh opposite ideas live in the same people, live in the same communities? I think it comes down to having control um and having choice over whether something's public or private. And our tools in the past have been on both extremes. You have like very private secure messengers or you have um completely open, you know, censorship resistant publishing tools. Um, I think what people and communities need increasingly is um ways to create subcommunities within kind of the the um the the uh everything that's going on across the whole web. You know, in reality, people want their experience to be across, you know, three people, five people, even 500 people. And so, um, we increasingly need tools that help create these sub communities within the the broader web. Um [clears throat] okay from u let's say business or builder perspective uh so some of your lessons learned uh in IPFS on like how to build a resilient tech nowadays like what you can recommend for someone who is building or running something like that. Mhm. Um my the thing I would really like all builders to know is that you have an early adopter group that is going to be very experimental and um uh very receptive to new new technologies and very tolerant frictions. Um but if you really want to reshape the web to make it more private as a whole, then these um principles and patterns need to be baked into the tools that are just appealing to everyone because they're convenient. Um >> and you know you people will sometimes make choices for ethical reasons, but they also have a lot of other pressures in their life. So you need to make sure that the convenient choice is also the safe, you know, the the the privacy first choice. Fair. [laughter] >> Okay. It makes sense. >> Make it like make it easy for users to make the right decision. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. I think uh so many pe so many companies overlook like UX and basically being humanentric. Let's be honest. >> U so be humanentric please if you build something. >> Um okay. uh >> beyond human centric I think um and I spent seven years as a UX designer. So that whole time we were just optimizing your individual experience. >> I think that that practice has changed. We're understanding that optimizing your individual experience to you know um increase engagement, increase retention often um just gives more value back to the the tech monopolies. So what we're really wanting to do is make sure people are building software that um that facilitates systems or workflows or you know um patterns, right? So ultimately are you trying to um create more connection? Are you trying to create more high quality connection? Are you trying to make um a certain workflow really easy? Um think about what you're enabling and make those things um uh your goal rather than building for any one specific individual. >> Yeah. Right. Uh yeah, but yeah, unfortunately we have to run up. [laughter] >> So Marsh, thanks for coming. >> Yeah, >> thank you. >> Thank you. Um thanks for watching. Ciao.