The US media pundit on the dangers of overregulation online, why he’s more frightened of the tech bros than AI itself, and how to reclaim the web by getting rid of the geeks

Jeff Jarvis was born in 1954 and studied journalism at Illinois’s Northwestern University. He worked as a TV critic and created the magazine Entertainment Weekly, later leading the online arm of US media company Advance Publications. Since 2001, he has been blogging at Buzzmachine.com and in 2005 he became an associate professor at City University of New York’s graduate school of journalism, directing its new media programme before retiring last year. Jarvis, who lives in New York, is the co-host of the podcasts This Week in Google and AI Inside.

What made you want to write your new book, The Web We Weave?
My glib answer is that somebody has to defend the freedoms of the internet because I fear they’re under attack. It’s important to say that I’m not defending the corporations or current proprietors of the internet, but I do think that moral panic over the net will lead to regulation that will affect freedoms for all. This turned into more of a critique of media’s coverage than I had predicted.