The Internet Needs More Friction

Justin Kosslyn leads product management at Jigsaw, a unit within Alphabet that builds technology to address global security challenges.

The Internet’s lack of friction made it great, but now our devotion to minimizing friction is perhaps the internet’s weakest link for security. Friction—delays and hurdles to speed and growth—can be a win-win-win for users, companies, and security. It is time to abandon our groupthink bias against friction as a design principle.

Highways have speed limits and drugs require prescriptions—rules that limit how fast you can drive a vehicle or access a controlled substance—yet digital information moves limitlessly. The same design philosophy that accelerated the flow of correspondence, news, and commerce also accelerates the flow of phishing, ransomware, and disinformation.

[Read More]