In the digital realm change is a constant. The ebb and flow of the field demands alacrity in directions, agendas, and strategies. At IT for Change, we have attempted to make sense of, and respond with agility to, the ever-shifting frames of the digital, keeping alive the political project that is digital justice.
Even by the old normal that demanded careful attention to techno-social upheavals, both big and small, the past year marks a tectonic shift. For one, the tech discourse moved decisively into the space of public discourse. The racialized and gendered margins powering artificial intelligence (AI) value chains, the colossal energy footprint of Big Data, the dreadful hate churned out by algorithmic social media circuits, the near-impossible enormity of bridging inequities in digital cultural capital are now a part of public discourse. They are also at the center of policy preoccupations.
The ‘liberalize or perish’ dogma in digital trade experienced a setback from an unexpected quarter. In late 2023, the US dropped digital trade demands at the World Trade Organization (WTO). Big Tech lobbyists in the US had convinced the Trump administration in 2019 to slip into the North American Free Trade Agreement the laissez-faire idea of ‘free cross-border data flows.’ This would restrict governments, especially in the South, from intervening to protect citizens’ privacy, market competition, and regulatory space, even preventing the necessary scrutiny of algorithms by courts. With mounting pressure from digital rights and trade justice activists, the US withdrew the proposal at the WTO.
Additionally, there have been critical gains for labor in the feisty battle with digital capitalism. For platform workers, the European Parliament’s vote early this year in favor of new rules to improve their working conditions was an important victory.
Further, renewed multilateral attention to addressing the democratic deficit in global digital cooperation has led to an array of measures, including the recent Global Digital Compact.
Closer home, in India as well, we have seen some positive trends. State governments have come forward to recognize gig workers’ entitlements; nine out of 10 lower-income Indian households, including in rural India, are now online; and the publicly provisioned Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system has created ripples everywhere.
However, technology cannot and does not transform the social opportunity structure on its own. The Digital India story is equally about gendered barriers to access and the lack of online safety for women and girls. Also, with little change in the lived realities of the marginalized, a focus on the basics of systemic change — a complete overhaul of economic and social policy vision — must lead the new techno-institutional order.
Globally and locally, the fight for our common future hinges on the architecture of societies and economies in the emerging political economy of digitalization. Yes, there is broad consensus that Big Tech’s shenanigans need reining in. But the devil is in the details, and a new digital reality needs much more than tweaking at the edges.
For organizations and movements who have engaged consistently with issues of institutional transformation and development justice, 2023-24 was a watershed moment as the digital agenda became integral to their imagination. Global justice now means working closely with digital justice issues whether at national levels on internet access and free speech; digitalization of welfare, agriculture, education, and health; AI-related harms, or with regional and multilateral fora on equitable, inclusive, and democratic digital societies. The tragic consequences of the weaponization of digital technology — the terror of mindless intelligence deployed for war — have also galvanized people’s movements the world over. Many are calling out Big Tech’s nexus of violent greed with the imperial powers.
People’s movements and organizations are keen to explore alternative imaginaries vigorously, and we are seeing confident articulations of the tech we want from gig workers of the world, feminists doing tech design, indigenous people reclaiming their data, and climate justice activists protesting digital extractivism.
The groundswell for convergence towards action is here, and we as social change actors seem to be ready with a collective discernment about actors and motivations in neoliberal digitality. We know that big is not necessarily beautiful, and a people’s tech, a public interest tech, calls for new institutions to be built for the people, by the people.
The path ahead is not without adversity — the contradictions of a market-first model, which simultaneously entrenches corporate power in the economy while legitimizing infinite possibilities for state censorship, are unfolding every day. The discourse of digital sovereignty is on the political agenda of the far right. Governments the world over are bandying about the language of platform accountability while writing laws that happily acquiesce to surveillance capitalism’s societal plunder, aggrandizing the powers to censor people’s voice. As Rachel Griffin argues, these developments are ‘neo-illiberal.’
For the Global South the task is uphill. The political heat surrounding the recent banning of X in Brazil, and right-wing mobilization around agendas of free speech speak to a dangerous alliance of convenience between regressive political forces and the Big Tech lobby. What the turn of events in Brazil suggests is that the struggle to balance basic rights and combat the corporate takeover of society in a deeply polarized environment is tricky and tough. And one that Brazil is far from alone in grappling with.
The canvas is webbed and super complex — we can agree. But this is no moment for paralysis. At IT for Change, we have taken on the complexity, tackling it with quiet gumption — with readiness, resilience, and resolve.
This year, we initiated the mammoth work of cross movements-based advocacy through the Global Digital Justice Forum. We broached conversations boldly with the unconverted. We held briefing sessions for officials from the EU and Dutch Ministries on digital innovation and data governance. We were called in as resource persons to orient diplomats in the Permanent Missions in New York on various themes of global digital cooperation and international governance. In these intensive exchanges with policymakers, our inputs came across as pertinent and provocative.
We collaborated with UN agencies on influential processes, shaping agendas, documents, and text, notably, the UN Global Digital Compact negotiations, UNCTAD’s Data for Development Issue Paper, and UNESCO’s Model Law on Platform Accountability. Government delegations from the South openly voiced their appreciation for our inputs stressing a decolonial data and AI governance paradigm.
We co-developed digital platform services grounded in feminist design principles for marginal women farmers and women workers in the informal urban economy across three states in India, in partnership with leading social enterprises in the country.
We worked with governments in India to concretely push for social justice in tech policies. Our Roots of Resilience conference, co-organized with the Platform Cooperativism Consortium and the Kerala Development and Innovation Strategic Council, was an important milestone: a civic-public partnership for sustainable and people-oriented tech models.
We embarked on a simple and elegant AI model for language teaching, that puts the teacher at the center of designing pedagogic responses relevant to learner contexts and needs. The model facilitates multilevel, multilingual, and multimodal approaches to language teaching, fostering inclusive education, even as mainstream AI has, tragically, worsened stratification in education. For us, our experiments are not only about decentralized language AI models with the potential to build foundational language abilities. They are equally about demonstrating ‘public AI’ pathways: AI that is publicly owned, with local and decentralized custody and control of device, code, and data.
We are proud to have assisted diverse movements and trade union federations, building their knowledge and tactical repertoire about vexatious questions on data and AI governance, while continuously learning about the frontier issues that escape the ivory towers of policy.
We found enormous hope and joy in our work on digital media with adolescent girls from marginalized urban and rural communities, who creatively owned up the tech to find their voice, forge peer solidarities, and assert their rights — to mobility, education, and self-determination.
We engaged closely with global networks, including the the OECD Watch, the T20, the Platform Cooperativism Consortium, the Coalition against Online Violence, and UN agencies, to shape and inform global guidelines for social media and platform governance.
And we are grateful that our work is having a huge impact in:
But we could not have done it alone. We stand on the shoulders of stalwarts and strong partner organizations, from civil society, social movements, and trade unions, to academia, the technology community, and many more. We are also deeply thankful for the trust and confidence we enjoy from the donor community, government departments, UN agencies, and field partners.
For the coming year, our plans include stepping up our field-building, networking, and community practice to further digital justice.
We have two flagship research projects in the pipeline: our work track on Regenerative AI that focuses on contextually grounded analyses of the AI revolution from the perspective of equitable development and sustainable digital transitions for the Global South; and the State of Big Tech project that will continue to spotlight the violations of economic, social, and cultural rights of the marginalized in corporate-controlled global data value chains.
Tracking online gender-based violence remains a high priority. We propose to study the gaps in current social media accountability frameworks through a gender equality scorecard for platform companies.
Building on the momentum of the Global Digital Justice Forum, we will co-develop sector-specific principles of data justice in key domains, such as food, health, biodiversity, trade, and IP, in order to shape the emergent global policy conversation on data justice.
And we will continue to keep an eye on digital policy processes at the multilateral and regional level from a rights and development standpoint. The WSIS+20 Review and new mechanisms of global data and AI governance emerging from the Global Digital Compact, the ILO’s proposed legal instrument on decent work in the platform economy, the Beijing+30 Review, the OCED’s Global Partnership on AI, the G20 in South Africa, and more.
We recommit to our local communities of practice to shape alternative grammars of people-led digital innovation. Our ‘Public AI’ models for language learning, and our adolescent girl empowerment program will be available for wider implementation in public education systems. And our partnerships with local government institutions, social enterprises, and ethical technologists in India will continue to inspire new directions.
Dear friends, we are moving digital justice from the margin to the mainstream. We are cognizant that external relevance at best is a glass that is only half full. Our internal culture and values matter equally, and we know we must invest with care in institution building.
As we embrace these interesting times, we will need friends who help us stay true to our mission. As the Zen Master story goes, it is neither the journey nor the destination that is important, it is the company.