 Thank you for being here. This is an English speaking panel. Just in case you forgot. And welcome to this panel on enabling democratic discourse beyond privatized digital public spheres. It's a very complicated title and can mean anything, I think. My name is Henrietta Litter. I'm the director of Open Knowledge Foundation in Germany. We are a civil society organization that has the goal to strengthen the digital sovereignty of citizens, enable democratic participation and support an ethical approach to technology for a common good. So it's fighting with tech tools for a better democracy. We have 60 minutes here on that big topic, digital public spheres. What are we talking about? Almost half of the global population uses social media in their daily lives. Of course, the internet is for many the most important source of information. Young people, as I learned, are using TikTok as a search engine. Many people exclusively get their information just through social media. Political actors everywhere in the world are paying insane amounts of money to micro-target potential voter groups very successfully. Fake news, you know all these terms, hate speech, manipulation, flourish in these social media. A digital and media increasingly contribute to the formation of opinions on an individual level, as I think, but also on a structural level in our societies. In an information ecosystem where the consumer's attention is the currency and distorted stories, fake news and filter bubbles flourish and therefore more and more shape our public discourse. At the same time, state actors everywhere who should exert informational and regulatory influence of outsource their capacities and services to these companies, big tech companies withholding public sector data and information from citizens. That was not such a positive introduction to our talk, so are we doomed? Can democracy still be saved? And yes, at Bitz and Bäume, we should ask those bold questions or is the post-factual age of privatized digital spheres inevitable? Where can we go to discuss important matters in a democratic manner? What can give us hope and help us to shape our present to a greater common good? And it's not the future, it's the present that we're talking about. Is it technological, innovation? Is it more media, digital literacy? Is it more fact-checking websites that we need? Is it global activism that will bring the change? Or is it the Digital Services Act that will save us all? It is my great pleasure to introduce my guests to you. My first guest to my left is Sarah Raman. She's a Berlin-based researcher and writer whose interests lie at the intersection of power, technology and justice. Over the past decade, her work has focused on supporting the responsible use of data and technology in advocacy and social justice, working with activists from around the world to support context-driven and thoughtful uses of tech and data. She has had fellowships at prestigious institutions at Stanford University, at the Harvard Kennedy School and with data and society. She also serves on the board of Saheli, a UK-based non-profit organization providing support and refuge to women of color fleeing from domestic abuse. She's also on many advisory boards, such as a People's Guide to Tech. Recently, she served as the interim executive director at the engine room and is currently working as a freelance consultant. Very welcome, Sarah. My second guest, yeah, give her a applause. So much expertise. My second guest is Jillian C. York. Jillian is also a writer and an activist whose work examines the impact of technology on our society and of cultural values. She's also based in Berlin and she's the director for International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She's also a fellow at the Center for Internet and Human Rights at the European University of Viedrina. She's visiting professor at the College of Europe in Nathaline and she's the author of, and you should read that book, Silicon Values, the future of free speech under surveillance capitalism, which was published in the last year. Warm welcome to you, Jillian. Before starting a quick announcement, I think we will opening up the discussion for your questions. So if you have contributions, questions short, please keep those in mind and get ready at quarter to six-ish. We start now discussing a bit problem analysis. That's how we want to start, but of course that's not where we want to stop. Perhaps we start with you, Jillian. Can you imagine or do you have an example just to make it very concrete what we are talking about? What kind of discourse in the digital age can symbolize the kind of discourse that we're leading in this year? Do we have something specific? Yeah, you know, I thought about this a lot. Thank you. It's such a great question. I will tell you that I'm coming this morning. I just arrived back in Berlin from Zambia where I was at a conference discussing a lot of these same issues. And I think that if I take a step back and look at this from a global perspective, I think that what we all share at this moment is this very unfortunate moment of propaganda, disinformation, and misinformation. And I think you can probably define those more clearly than I, but the way that I see it is state-sponsored discourse, propaganda, disinformation being intentionally misleading and misinformation being a lot of the other things that we see, which don't necessarily have intent behind them. Would you agree? Yeah. So I think that that's one of the things that we're all sharing globally. And in the next couple of years, we're seeing elections coming up in a number of different countries in 2023 and 2024. And I think that that's actually what concerns me the most. We've just gone through this phase of loads of medical misinformation, misinformation about different conflicts happening in different parts of the world. And now I think we have to be focused on these upcoming elections. And yeah, I'll kind of stop there because I think that that's where we're headed in this discourse. Yeah, thanks for sharing. Sarah, you also have some idea or some example that could symbolize more of current public discourse. Yeah. I mean, for me, I think one example came up yesterday when, yeah, on Friday, Amnesty International published a big report about all the ways that Facebook or now Metta contributed to the genocide against the Rohingya population in Myanmar. And in that day, and I think for me, in the report, they outlined how as early as 2012, there were activists from Myanmar going to Menlo Park to meet personally with high ups at Facebook to tell them we're really worried about the way that misinformation, that disinformation is being spread. It could lead to targeted violence. It could like it's hate speech. It's inciting violence. You need to do something about it. And of course, we know they did nothing and five years later, a full five years, which is wild. Five years later, there was a genocide against the Rohingya, and there were multiple visits from 2012 through to 2017. And then onwards, all documented in this report as have been documented for ages by Rohingya activists and activists from Myanmar. And I think for me that really, I guess the problem at the root of that is how social media, as we know it now, is so incredibly western centric. All the resources are dedicated to certain areas of the world instead of others. At the time that these activists were going to Menlo Park in 2012, Facebook didn't even have an office in Myanmar. I'm not even sure they had one in Asia at that time. I believe that they still don't have one in Myanmar. It's wild. And it's just, yeah, I guess it's just an example of how we build these tools, or people build these tools in a certain area of the world. And there was this expectation that they would scale, that they could go to all areas of the world. And I think that as an assumption is deeply problematic and has led to the fact that they are now these tools that people can use for all of the things that Jillian talked about and so much more. Can I just add to that? Because I think that that's such a poignant example and ties on to what I said. And actually one of the things that's really interesting is just to add a bit of detail that there were four content moderators working in the Burmese language in 2012 when this was brought to Facebook's attention and that there were still only four until just a few years ago after the Reuters report came out, I believe, in 2017. So they had all of that time to fix that. And this is the same conversation was coming up a lot in Zambia around elections because there's still, I think, only seven or eight languages indigenous to the African continent. And that might actually be a high estimate that have coverage in content moderation. So there's no moderation for entire countries. And these are countries where you have elections coming up or you have more and more people coming online and that attention just isn't there. The resources are not being put into any sort of care. Yeah. I think the fact that you can see so clearly the prioritization of what's most important, where are we going to spend our money and the fact that it's up to a private company. I mean, we talk about digital public discourse and that kind of thing and our imaginations and our spaces have really been captured by these companies who can do what they want, whether we want them to do something differently or not. So when I understand you rightly, Sarah, you say one of the biggest obstacles is the western centrism that most of those discourse platforms have developed and they are just not fitting or they're causing even worse. A lot of problems in other parts of the world. Yeah. I think the values that come with that, like lots of, I mean, you can talk way more about this, but the Silicon values plug plug. No, I mean things like expecting technology to scale, expecting it to be frictionless, seeing all these things as positive things and building for them when actually there are very good reasons why things would stay local or very good reasons why things would take a minute to get online or you might be encouraged to stop and think before you post that kind of thing. I think that assumption that you can build something in one area of the world and then just automatically export it without any care for or any kind of attention to the infrastructure that's required to maintain that, to care for it, the labor that goes into it is problematic and I guess that does stem from the places that it was built. Yeah, I absolutely agree and it's interesting because, you know, I work a lot on freedom of expression and this often gets framed as a speech problem that we have different cultural values around speech and while that's true, we also have international standards around speech and of course, you know, you see extremes of this, the US is not a signatory to these standards, you have other countries which routinely violate them despite being party to various treaties, but that being said, I'd be curious to see if you agree, but I tend to see the problems as being more architectural and less about, you know, having to create different cultural standards on who can say what on a platform and so, you know, the friction that you talk about or the fact that, you know, the number of characters in one language, using Twitter as an example, we have 280 characters in English, but in certain other languages, you actually get to say a lot more in a shorter, sorry, in a smaller space and so all of these different architectural aspects play into it and I think too, the business model and the fact that we're incentivized to participate in certain types of discourse plays into it as well, yeah. Yeah, definitely, I would agree. So would that mean on the opposite side that if it's not working for other parts of the world, perhaps it works then in the Western world? I mean, I don't think it works anywhere. I feel like we've been having this discussion about social media as affecting democracy, like I remember when Brexit happened years ago, I still can't joke about it, don't make any EU jokes to me. We had all these moments of like, oh no, maybe social media, maybe misinformation, maybe disinformation is going to have an impact on democracies and on all of these things across the world and that was five years, six years ago now, 2016 and then we had Trump and then we've had just like a series, I mean, and before that there were also many things. I don't think it's I don't think it's really working for anyone. I think it's more that it was built for and by certain people with a certain kind of mindset in mind and then it just, it just went and the care and the care and the infrastructure needed to make it not awful wasn't there or wasn't prioritised and as Julie mentioned still isn't being prioritised. I just, I can't help but think about, you know, we're seeing what's happening with the elections in Italy and I've seen a lot of discourse around this with people saying well, you know, it's social media that causes these things to happen and in some ways I agree and in other cases, you know, I also think everything that you just said could also be true about radio historically. I think radio, you know, radio is another example of a technology that became popularized just about about a hundred years ago in the home and which also, you know, took some pretty wild and problematic turns in our history and so I think that there is something to be said for the fact that these technologies are still new but I think that we also have to combine that with the fact that they aren't built for all of us and perhaps I would agree with you that I don't think that they're optimized for the West or anywhere else in the world either. No, I completely agree and that's a really good point that I think we often forget about when we get to this whole social media is destroying democracy issue like there are so many, you know, just fundamentally broken societal issues and I think one of the big learnings hopefully that many people who build tech have realized is you can't just lay a technology open on top of broken societies or broken social systems and hope that that's going to make it better and I think for a very long time and definitely still in some areas of the tech space, there's still this expectation that like, okay, this is broken but here, here's a technology solution like here's the solution to this big societal problem and that expectation is just ignoring all those layers of brokenness that came before it or can come underneath it I guess. So we cannot just wait for an innovation to happen and save us, no. No, no, I mean I think we have to, well I don't want to get too, because I know we're going to talk about solutions so I'll hold my tongue for now but I think that if I could use one sentence say that I think that we do need to be thinking in much more of a participatory manner. Yeah, I mean I think for me that like if you look at the UK over the last two weeks, we got a new head of state and a new prime minister and no one in the public voted for either of them so if you come up with like if I think about civic tech in the UK or you know, head of state, you know, it's technically the head of state despite having done absolutely nothing, never been voted in then we have a prime minister who's a, not the time, but the fact that nobody voted for either of them, it just, it's not even a failing democracy, that's just not a democracy and I find it just very weird when I look at, like when I talk to people about civic tech in the UK or people say oh that, you know, that petition tool where you can, you know, the UK parliament has this petition tool where anyone can start a petition and if you get more than 100,000 signatures it can be, it might be debated in the UK parliament. It's like what good is that if, if the democracy behind it is fundamentally broken, if we didn't vote for the people who are making decisions, like you can take your petition tool, it's fundamentally not useful and I think that's like there's some great things going on in technology and you know, that kind of thing but I think it's really useful to just look at the root of the problem, like a failed democracy and nothing's going to help that apart from revamping the way that we think about democracy. See and the root almost never a technology right but it's a society problem. Here we're talking looking at user numbers and tech companies, I mean they see majority of people is enjoying what they offer so if the mainstream is fine with it and it's just 85%, that's fine for them to get their profit so and the way we design technologies and the digital spheres, many times we see like does it work for a majority, is the technology it's kind of what kind of mobility tools do most of the people need and then we design those technologies, we don't ask what kind of mobility tools do like 0.5% of the population need with special needs but we design technology for a majority so with public discourse it's kind of the same like is it for companies even for states it's enough to have a majority for whom it is working. Would you agree to that? No. No, I mean now I think the kind of the premise of inclusive design has shown that you know you can build it for example we look at urban infrastructure if you build a city that is accessible to disabled people who have different disabilities there will be many people through their lives that go through a period of disability where they need the features that are offered that were designed originally for disabled people and I think there's a growing movement or like lots more people thinking about inclusive design and under many different names like user-centered design, human-centered design that kind of thing where you just think where it helps actually to design for the margins and then you actually come up with a product or with a solution that is much more friendly to the majority and it's obviously a little bit harder sometimes and it requires designers or developers to get out of their comfort zone perhaps or for resources to go to designers and developers who are outside of the majority which is often also hard but I think yeah I think you always get a better product when you're designing for more people I mean for people who yeah who are at the margins. Yeah and I would say that I mean I completely agree with all of that and I would also say that social media platforms or at least when we're talking about social media this obviously encompasses a range of products but I think this conversation we're talking about the major global platforms and I would say kind of the big three YouTube, Twitter, Facebook of course there are others but speaking of those three specifically I don't even think that they were designed with the majority in mind I think that they were designed with the highly privileged in mind I was I think I was an early adopter of Twitter and Facebook back in the day and I recall the way that these were talked about at conferences the way that the you know the initial users of these platforms were mostly white people in the United States and in Silicon Valley specifically and people who were not necessarily going to be harassed on these platforms or live in a country where you know social media is one of the only options for being able to speak freely because you don't have a free press and so you know etc etc so I think that yeah the initial users of these platforms were kind of ended up sorry I'm not so articulate today I think the tiredness but kind of ended up directing the way that they initially that they eventually went and so because they were designed without really really being inclusive in any way of potential users that's what we've gotten and of course now a lot of these platforms have tried to go back and bring people into workshops and have some sort of co-design going on but they're not doing it in any truly meaningful way from my perspective yeah it does feel much more like a you know band-aid plaster on a gaping wound of everything awful coming out and it's much more in response to you know it's like little things in response but if you look at where the resources are going where the priorities are it's not towards you know making sure that there are content moderators who speak all of the language of the people on the platform and that kind of thing I really like the design for the margins perhaps it's a good frame to move on to a more visionary phase of the debate how can we design better discourse or let's dream of a truly great platform for all of us to raise our voices to be heard to participate in discourse how should that look like to me I don't think it's a I don't think the answer is going to be a platform I think that's some of the most exciting work that I see going on acknowledges much more the the possibilities the multiplicities the the potential futures the fact that we might need different platforms like just forgetting that assumption that if there's something it must be for me like maybe there are things that won't be usable by us and that's fine because it was built with someone else in mind maybe they'll be having a great time on that little local platform but I think yeah for me the the most exciting work is definitely much more acknowledging how communities work like they're small and they require trust and relationships and care and I think one thing that we've forgotten with the big tech platforms you know it really invisibilizes so much of the work that goes into making it happen you know from the environment to the internet infrastructure to the content moderators we're encouraged to not see any of that and just see certain parts of it and I find it much more exciting to think about multiple platforms that are run by different people for different purposes that have different options available for different yeah for different communities yeah yeah no I absolutely agree I mean I and I you know I fell into that trap myself just a moment ago right I do focus on the big platforms because for a lot of people you know I'm sure you've heard the slightly inaccurate phrase that in some countries Facebook is the internet I disagree with that phrasing but at the same time a lot of times these are the entry points for people for various reasons into the social media space and so I think it's really important that we look at both sides of this one these big platforms where a lot of the political discourse is happening where politicians sign up but then I also very much agree with you that we need a multitude of platforms that have all of the things you mentioned plus different rules I think that's something that doesn't get emphasized enough but I also think about you know there are wonderful existing communities on some of the bigger platforms as well I mean I assume that there's probably at least one other Reddit fan in the room I'm a huge fan of Reddit and they've actually put in a lot of effort in trying to make their spaces better both by creating rules after you know many years of not doing so but also by you know coming up with some really innovative ways of trying to change the discourse so I assume people know about this but just in case one of when there was a lot of COVID disinformation happening on the COVID subreddit they actually brought in doctors to volunteer and participate in the discourse and try to you know to educate people but also to engage with them to not just say you're wrong and slap a fact-checking label but to really be part of that conversation and so I think of examples like that and ways that we you know can hold each other accountable as communities rather than looking to these more authoritarian platforms I would say for lack of a better term to do that for us I mean yes of course content moderation has to exist but I do think that there are other ways especially when we're talking about some of these these smaller platforms or more community oriented platforms yeah definitely another framing like that I've have enjoyed coming across over the last few months is around kind of digital civil courage that you know it's out if you see someone being harassed if you seeing someone if you see someone being bullied just as you hopefully would on the street you would you can step in that it's not all I mean I think there's a fine line there of you know not making it everyone's responsibility for platforms failings but I think there is also a line where you can say look if you're if you're seeing this it's it's your job to not your job but part of your social responsibility to just bring it back to the fact that this is all about relationships that's how everything works we're relationship oriented and I love that example about the doctors because it really yeah it brings it back to actual people having to do things to engage with other people and doesn't make it so you know them and me and I'm just looking and it's a screen and impersonal yeah absolutely and I mean I think too with misinformation and and those conversations I mean there's so much complexity the ways that these are being discussed in terms of regulation and and from my perspective you know I I'm I'm often of two minds because while I want to see an authority step in and just rip some of this stuff out on the other hand I'm also you know acutely aware of the fact that my own home government the U.S. is perpetuating disinformation as well at the moment so in a number of different ways and I'm happy to talk about that if anyone's interested but that being said you know I think that some of the the conversations happening now around how we fix that and what we do as individuals in these spaces to you know for example to not share links to stories that are that are filled with disinformation or hateful commentary to you know to not retweet for for example people who are sharing things but to screenshot all of these little details but when put together really you know do create a different picture and do allow us to be a lot more thoughtful about these conversations rather than just sort of mindlessly yelling into the void yeah I think there's been some really interesting research over the past few years actually around you know methods that you can use like you mentioned kind of strategic silence like if you're outraged by something don't don't link to it don't retweet it it just you know I think research has shown I think it was from data in society actually that if someone sees it if you amplify it no matter whether your comment is this is wrong it will stay in people's head that they've seen it so you're actually contributing to the very problem you're trying to to address or to yell about and there are definitely things like that that we can all do yeah so I see two streams here is one is the reform of the bigger platforms with very innovative technologies with input from different societal parts and stakeholders which can bring more equity more participation more quality checks in fact checking it's one side it's more jealousy then it's here the decentralized communities and the the multiplicity of different networks right that we design something for our local community or regional one or topic specific perhaps so there's kind of this yep is it a parallel world of different platforms that we use pick and choose for different topics for for groups and first question I mean that's basically what we see right now right we have those two streams and we have this we need to reform what we have because in functionality and in outreach they are great and big and the platforms and people use them they're just there so I mean we should deal with that and also have those smaller platforms with all their advantages but also disadvantages perhaps both sides and how can we create interlinkages so how can we make it work for democratic discourse to combine these two and not to overwhelm like the the normal person who just has an idea about one topic but not the time to spend on 20 different platforms choosing the right thing I mean we all do it as a business but perhaps not everybody can do that how can we create co-create and come together yeah yeah so I mean you know I'm I'm aware that we're in Berlin and this is a city where a lot of my friends are let's say sort of internet vegans in the sense that they you know actually are able to extricate themselves from Google and sure maybe we in this room are all able to I I don't personally because I am lazy no I'm kidding but I don't yeah so I mean I think you know I I don't want to say it's you know explicitly necessarily a place of privilege I think that there are there is another internet out there but I do think that we have to meet people where they where they are and a lot of the people that I was speaking with in this past week you know are reminding me reminding us that in some of the countries in which they live Facebook is still cheaper to access zero rating right am I blanking on the term yeah so you know you're getting free data to access certain platforms and therefore you're incentivized to use that platform there's also of course the network effect for people who are international that's a platform where you can keep track of everyone where everyone's going to be where it's translated into your own language so often the feedback that I get from people that I speak to elsewhere in the world is of course I would use a better platform but it's often the platforms that are being built you know in smaller communities that have fewer resources that are also not translated and so yeah that being said I do think it's two streams on the one hand I do want to reform these big platforms whether that happens through regulation through voluntary measures through activism I frankly I think it's all of the above and probably some litigation too and then on the flip side I'm really excited about new ideas as well and I want to see you know a variety of a million platforms bloom but yeah I think I think that we do have to to remember to meet people where they are and that that isn't always that people don't always have the same ability to walk away from big platforms as we might yeah yeah I think there is I completely agree that there's this kind of internet snobbery of assuming that if you still use a platform then you don't have a problem with the extractive business model when of course we do I just want to keep in touch with my family who all use a different platform and when it's a choice between being morally right or having contact with my cousins I'm going to choose family contact I just saw some research that actually made this assumption said you know all of these people in this country have no problem with the with the extractive business model because they're all still using it it's like no you've really misunderstood how people how people make decisions about their lives and kind of the like the snobbery around almost reminds you of like the digital security stuff back in the day when you'd be like oh if you're using this then you don't care about your security like well maybe that's all they like you can only afford this kind of phone so you're just making the most of life with the phone and if the choice is no phone or a phone you're going to choose a phone um so I do think we need to get a bit more nuanced in how we understand and give yeah just have a bit more empathy for different people's lives and approaches I guess I would take you into your question about like are we just going to have a lot of different platforms I think we a lot of us already do choose different platforms for different things like we all kind of perform slightly different personas or identities on different platforms and it does you know people do it to different extents but it makes it gives me hope that there is you know space for smaller decentralized platforms but I think I mean one person's work who I really admire is a person called Darius Kazemi in the US who's been who's done a lot of work on helping people run their own social their own small social media network for their friends and his his approach is kind of building things for human scale instead of planetary scale or global or whatever and he has this whole guide on how to run a small social network just for your friends where you know everyone in there you all share the maintenance and the infrastructure kind of labor you do it out of care and love I guess to some extent because you want to stay in touch with your friends and you want to you know have this little space for you or um I mean I say that I don't do it myself because it's a lot of labor but I think it's a cool approach which probably identifies some of the kind of ironies here where we're like that sounds really cool but I'm going to stay on Twitter it sounds really cool it also sounds very cozy but democratic discourse is the opposite of being cozy right it's meeting up with people and getting exposed to ideas I don't like and still arguing and thinking about it and getting in touch with a diverse group of people how do you do that in person then workplace is one thing where we mix when we try to yeah mix up teams and not I mean in the activism world it's more of the same but there's there's kind of job description where you meet up of course in leisure time like being in a sports club in an arts club being a parent you only share this one but not the political views of the other parents so there's of course in real life there is this exposures and one of the core questions not a new question of course is with the fragmentation of networks and if discourse is only to get the same ideas right so is it too cozy with the decentralized community networks do they help or is it is it is it more a deep dive into what I actually also like and other people who are like me I think it depends I mean no no no I have thoughts but yeah I was gonna say I think it depends on what kind of community you think about like one of the websites that I um or the I guess in a way social media platforms that I use the most right now is name an and point dear so I'm not working for them that was not an advert but it's kind of nice because it's only people in my kids and should we quickly say it's a neighborhood platform exchanging yeah it's like a neighborhood platform it's only for people who live in the same neighborhood as you you can only see their posts your posts stay in that neighborhood you could select which neighborhoods around you and you have to put your address in um and it's this nice combination of online and offline I've actually been able to meet so many neighbors through it because you know I've been like oh I'm giving this away or oh you're giving this way or you're selling this and it's this really nice and there's lots of discussions that are very funny about you know someone being outraged by something and then someone else being like it's Berlin get over it and then you know all the comments are just very funny but it's a lot more civil because we all know that we live within like five streets of each other so you're probably gonna bump into someone um and yeah I mean that kind of community that kind of decentralization to an extent I find yeah much more fulfilling and useful than many others I guess it's I'm just laughing because we um we moved into our building before that site existed I think or before we knew about it and so we actually just created a one for our building so we have like a you know 200 person chat um anyway that being said um yeah no I mean I I think I think that yeah we have to remember that there's different purposes for these different things and so I try I think about it you know in terms of like analogizing this in political discourse and protest movements um we you know we wouldn't have like this this conversation happened a lot around the 2011 uprisings um about like how people were you know organizing on Facebook or organizing on Twitter and they weren't right like yes there was there were these conversations happening in public and there was information being shared but people were still organizing in private groups and of course that that that's true here that's true in a lot of places um and so you think about that like a living room or salon and that's what these cozy platforms are like and then of course you also have wide public discourse on platforms which I would analogize to more of what happens um you know at a general assembly or at a protest or anywhere where a lot of people are in one big space maybe even a university campus and so you know I think that when we think about all of these different platforms this is why it's so important to keep all of them in mind I mean yes I've extracted myself from Facebook and you may have chosen to extract yourself from something too and it's probably better for all of us if we're not trying to be everywhere all at once um but I think that you know ultimately all of these platforms do serve a certain purpose and cozy is okay too safe is okay too yeah yeah I mean I would also just thinking about how many of my friends over the last couple of years have said I'm taking a social media break from my mental health or just from my health or we go on holidays and say I didn't look at social media I think we are all beginning to realize that it's not good for us even if we do still participate even if we do still you know mindlessly scroll through Instagram there is this wrecking like this acknowledgement that it's not having good effects on us and if you look at I've been looking doing some research recently into how child uh children's rights organizations approach the digital discourse digital platforms area and so many child rights organizations have whole guides and so many resources dedicated to what to do about the problem of social media having this awful impact on children's and teenagers mental health and that's you know I think that's coming and I think platforms maybe hopefully see that that's coming as a as a problem and I think more and more people are becoming aware that that is you know it's not good for us I see many examples so it's not a talk what we need to do in the future right but it's happening right now it's lots of reforms or new platforms coming into life like the name ande or you name it and here at bits and boimers we stress all the time that when talking about sustainability and digitalization and transformation there's always a very strong individual level like what you can do what choices you can make and that's extremely important like you choose to be on the cozy or choose to take break or choose to do something or don't do some other things and that's one stream but of course it's also when when you are in a movement structural change I mean with all those individual decisions you make you can make a difference of course but talking on a structural level what does it take to implement the vision that you elaborated with reforming existing platforms but also enabling other new forms so decentralized networks what would be like key actors or key institutions structures where we would need to see change except for the individual level what we can do as a user. Zara you want to start? So yeah I mean this is tricky I think one of the obvious ones is regulation I mean I'll just state that out right I think that you know the DSA has brought forward a lot of necessary measures some of the things that I'm and I'm not an expert on the DSA so I'll just state that out right thankfully my I have a colleague who is which gives me a bit of time to step back from that but that being said some of the things that I'm most excited about are things that civil society actors have been pushing for for a long time things like requiring platforms to provide users with appeals requiring them to be more transparent in their actions around moderation that being said I mean I am also acutely aware that Europeans are regulating for Europe and that this while it will have an effect on the rest of the world in the same way that NetStyG did it's not always a positive effect and it's not always going to trickle down to everyone else and so when we think about these platforms and our societies and our society's problems as global I think that we do have to think either completely freshly in terms of how regulation could look in a global context or and or beyond regulation and that's why a lot of my effort is focused on pushing these companies to act on their of their own free will which of course is always an uphill battle but it does exist these changes do exist and I think that you know that's where we can also vote with our feet so to speak and in walking away from some of these platforms but that being said I mean the thing that I think is really important here is that we're acting in global solidarity so you know I think the pandemic was a time where the dsa got pushed through during the pandemic right so I look at it as something that happened in the absence of a global discourse now that many of us are cautiously going back out into the world I think that we have to reconsider what global solidarity looks like and that's and I know that this is huge in your work as well so I'll just I'll stop myself there and no no I mean I'm very very much in agreement but I was going to say in it made me think about how maybe even the question of what institutions do we need what what solutions do we need to fix the platforms I would just go back to like the lower layers we need movement power we need all the the organizing that has always happened throughout history to make major societal changes I don't think is any different when it comes to technology I think we need resources going to the people who have ideas who can come up with solutions themselves and and it's not necessarily us I think some of the most exciting things that are happening by people have nothing to do with digital rights and people who are so outside of the tech social change tech for good discourse who are just coming up with solutions for their communities because they need them and that's where I don't know if like thinking about designing for the margins or just listening to populations and communities who've been historically excluded and starting from that and maybe for some people it means you know like if I think of the UK my the big thing in my mind isn't how do we make sure that you know regulation works and these platforms works it's how do we make sure that we get a democracy how do we get democracy back and I don't think we can even plan for a digital digital democratic debate or digital discourse if we don't have a democracy so maybe the attention needs to go more to the the roots of the problems as you mentioned before and and think about that instead all right so it's pushing companies it's the first step and then going to the roots this will take us like a hundred years right there's always been people organizing at the roots and making change happen from the bottom up and I think there's this kind of arrogance that comes with technically like with technology solutions and digital rights spaces where we think oh you know we know we understand the technology therefore we're the ones that need to come up with the solution and actually I think that's hopefully we're all beginning to realize that has not worked really yeah I mean and I also think that there's an arrogance that comes with a lot of the regulatory work that's happening too where state actors say oh well I can fix this for you know and often they're wrong in their approaches but I can fix this for my people but without considering the impact that that will have on other people I'm sorry I'm really not a fan of net stg so I'm gonna be frank about the impact that it's out on the rest of the world and that negativity but yeah I mean I think that that's that's another thing that we have to remember is that you know while even if even if we're living in the democratic state and I don't think either of our our home countries are doing so well at the moment um that you know our states are often working together to surveil us to um impinge on our freedoms freedom of expression our other freedoms um and I think that that's just another reminder of why working together across different countries is so important yeah I think geographies yeah like what you said earlier about it being about solidarity and collective care I think that's if we look at the solutions and the approaches that people took to the pandemic a lot of it uh it's the same it's the same approach that was needed we needed everyone to be having everyone in mind in how we approach that and not being so individualistic and not thinking just about what works for me um but instead those those operating from a place of care and solidarity I think is kind of the answer to everything and this it's always surprising and not surprising that when we talk about digital age we're not talking about digital and technology right that talking about communities and how we need to find a way to better um find a way to discuss to engage to argue in a democratic matter perhaps we have time for one or two questions from the audience but before let me go back to the role of activism right activism since both of you are not only very knowledgeable experts as we have now experienced and but also inspiring activists right with initiatives and lots of not only thoughts but also action so perhaps you could each of you share one call to action for this bits and boim and movement give us some what can we do once we leave the stage and everybody leaves this room and what needs to be done on a structural level and then it's time for one or two questions so you can prepare if you want to I think I I think I prepped incorrectly for this question so I'm gonna answer it slightly differently which is to say because I think we talked a little bit about a movement and there's one that I'm kind of excited about right now that maybe people in this room don't know about so I'll just share it there's something called the coalition for independent tech research um which is a group of people that basically anyone who doesn't work for the big companies can join it's mostly made up of academics and activists I'm not behind this at all so I'm not this is not an advertisement in fact I've not participated to the degree that I would have liked but I did see today that they're inviting more people to participate and they've been really doing interesting work so I highly recommend looking into that and if anyone wants details just find me on the internet and ask me how to find them and I'll share yeah I think there are some really cool yeah just groups initiatives collectives things going on I've been working a little bit with this group called the nummon fund which is the first first fund for feminist technology in the larger world so basically excluding Europe and the US which I think is a fantastic premise to start with um and really trying to build put resources into people who are building feminist technologies um emphasis on technologies like not looking for one solution that's going to save us all but instead just just putting resources to the people like we were just talking about who need them the most and that kind of thing gives me a lot of hope when we think about you know yeah how we can get get money and resources to the people who are coming up with those structural solutions and you know community-led solutions and all sorts of approaches that work for them and their people thank you so much can we support those initiatives or should we engage I think the one that I'm looking that I mentioned I think engagement is what they're looking for but I they know best if they need support as well but yeah I mean if you if you are looking if you don't have time for engagement but you're looking to financially support something I recommend looking up one of the incredible digital rights organizations in other countries and I can throw some out on Twitter later today um that are in need of funding yeah I think pretty similar if if there's any anyone who works for one of those extremely rich tech billionaires in the room then nummon fund would love philanthropic donations um but yeah I'd say maybe more uh yeah yeah great the ones that you mentioned it's good to be very concrete so everybody gets something you can do this now okay is there a question or many yes there is one please go ahead yes um my question is actually linked to a subject that just came up so the cost resources finances and obviously it's great to think kind of on a higher level in a utopian sense but um yeah with the running costs of these platforms obviously now what fuels them is the motive to make profit and we have I think we all agree that we have to overcome that to a certain degree because that's where the extractivism is rooted in so um I feel like on the cozy neighborhood level I kind of understand how we can do that it's more on a volunteering basis maybe we all chip in to buy a server or something but do you have also a vision how to do that more on a larger scale and yeah maybe not necessarily from a business model perspective but basically who should wear the cost and pay for that thank you cost yeah I mean so raise your hand if you pay for a streaming service music or or movies right okay so why aren't we paying for any of the places where we use where we where we engage in discourse and I don't want to say that this is necessarily the option the best answer I think that there's a lot of other ideas as well and I think again a multitude of ideas is the best way to go but I would happily pay a few euros a month for something that you know was a positively run platform where I could help fund it and I would even pay a little bit more so that somebody in another country or somebody in a community in Germany or the US who doesn't have a lot of money could also participate um I would love to see some sort of sliding scale version of that that I think that that would be quite cool I don't know why we don't really have it yeah I was gonna say if you think about the solidarity option if you think about who who can afford to pay a little bit and um because I think the problem with some so many of those super decentralized ones like the you know think about how to build a social media network or a social network for your friends it does require you or your friends between you to you know cover the cost of a server and have volunteer time and ignores all sorts of care labor and infrastructure that goes into making the world work um but if there were some kind of solidarity based approach um that would be much more preferable why shouldn't the state pay I mean if it's the democratic service through facility discourse I mean I don't want the state to run my any like the the platform where I go for discourse personally I think the state should definitely pay for some things local journalism or arts culture lots of things I think that introduced and I don't know I think that introduces difficult um power dynamics I guess unless it's really carefully done yeah and I think we've seen examples from other countries where the state does have a large stake in the telecoms and that hasn't really gone so well I mean Kenya's a really fascinating example of this um where I think I forget the percentage but the state owns like a really really large or has invested a large percentage in one of uh in the biggest telco um and yeah we've seen a lot of interference there and so maybe that could work in Germany but that sort of model maybe that's a big maybe but I don't think that that sort of model would work in a lot of places and I certainly would not want the US government involved in something like that so there's another question yes sure yes thank you um so my question um addresses more the the regulatory side um because um I have the impression that um we need a different mindset in regulation than we have now um I think the um digital regulation that we've seen up to now is more reactive um and so um regulators see there is a harm and then they try to abolish it and I think what we would need is um well um a regulation that comes from the recognition yes the platforms they shape society and so please take responsibility for for what you are doing and so that would mean um to open up the black boxes and hold the companies um make them transparent first and then hold them accountable um so um engage in what what you're doing anyway engage in conversation with stakeholders but that should not be only voluntary it should be something that they have to do because they should be accountable yeah I absolutely agree um I I think we're too short on time for me to explain why this won't happen in the US um and I I'm not I'm not trying to be you know super negative I just after many years of working in this space that sort of regulation in the United States is virtually impossible that's another great reason to have more platforms coming out of Europe more platforms coming out of other places in the world where positive regulation at forcing the black box to be open that sort of thing is actually possible because I fundamentally agree with you and I also think competition is another thing that we need to be enforcing amongst these platforms we can't have more monopolies yeah I mean I'm definitely I'm very far from being a regulation expert but I would say that dynamic of people trying to address harms reactively rather than proactively is something that we see in so many other spaces as well like in civil society so much work is reactively responding to oh no this awful thing has happened what can we do or this awful legislative piece of legislation is proposed how can we make it less bad and going to I think one of Henry Ed's earlier questions I'm so much more excited by the work that's saying that's saying you know forget let's just not focus on the harms right now and instead think about how we want these spaces to look how we want to be thriving how we want to make these spaces that are joyful and wonderful and actual places that we can happily be instead of places that we put up with because we really need them in order to do some fundamental thing and so that move to productivity is something I think we're seeing in a variety of different spaces great there's one last question or if it's quick we have both yeah please yes so you are also speaking about the broken democracy and I would like to share two fascinations and ask how like do you share hope about those solutions so one is the juice media in Australia and their impact maybe on the recent elections there juice media the cover cover back like a very small project extremely small project but with huge impact I guess and the other one it's maybe more to Sarah Rahman as you live in UK I guess so I observed the extinction rebellion building in a very old-fashioned social structures and at the same time a lot of digital new tools in the movement and it's it seemed like like yeah so the question was your viewpoint on such solutions to democracy or do you see others oh wait we take your question too from the woman in the white shirt and yeah my question would be because you said more movement power is needed for digital rights how do we create that given the complexity of the topics and given the huge knowledge differences between actors and me maybe I can answer the second one first I feel like building movement power for digital rights means getting outside of the digital rights community and acknowledging that everyone has different expertise is whether that's technical or lived experience or just all sorts of and all sorts of experience next these needs to be involved if we are to come up with solutions that work for any number of us um so for me it's more about making making pathways for other movements to to feel like they have a stake in the digital rights debates instead of making it I think I don't know I don't know if people disagree with me I think up till now the whole space has been quite exclusive of you can't you know you can't come into this space because you don't have the technical knowledge or you don't know enough about how this technology works in order to have an opinion about how this platform should be run and instead just being just twist like being open to the fact that maybe the people in the digital rights community don't know enough about how people are using platforms or how communities are using them um and seeing what solutions they have so just distributing the you know being a bit more welcoming or open to seeing things and I guess on the um question of those examples they sound they sound great I'm definitely not an expert on democracies and um I'm just frustrated by the UK really I live here but grew up in the UK um but no I think that like anything that combines I don't know relational work and social structures with digital tools that actually meet their needs it sounds sounds good to me yeah I'll just I'll go really quick because I know we're out of time um so I to the juice media example I actually I know I know one of them um and we met like many years ago and I think that what has made them so powerful is the manner in which they engage like it's it's subversive it's creative it's fun it's entertaining and I think that that's where a lot of that strength comes in um I can't speak to the current I haven't been following them recently um but I think that there are lots of examples like that from around the world and that that one's just a really strong one so everybody should check that out and then to movement power I mean I think I agree with everything that you said and I would also just add that I think we are at a point in the digital rights movement now and only recently maybe even just during the pandemic where I am genuinely seeing um these conversations happen with people from outside of the digital rights community so this past week there were two simultaneous events one was trust con in the US the other one was 5 Africa which I was at in Zambia and both of them were very very um like very strong in engaging communities from outside of the digital rights spaces and I hadn't really seen that to the same degree in previous years and I think we're just going to continue to see more of it because people have have woken up to the fact that we have to bring in you know the LGBT community sex worker communities um other marginalized groups from various places um and that's really the conversations that we're seeing now sorry those are just two random examples there's so many others but all yeah so we see there's so much to be done but this panel is over so thank you Jillian thank you Sarah thank you for listening and for your questions have a great evening bye bye