"As a civil society in past few years, we have had a front-row seat in seeing the role of digital technologies and internet in both advancing democracies and undermining institutions integral to a free democratic space. And holding these two realities together is important as we truly want to present a holistic picture of the role that technologies play in our democracies.
These two binaries also come as no surprise to me, having worked with young women and girls in Pakistan regarding their access to technologies and internet, which can be both as a liberating space in their lives but also abuse and violence not only online but offline as well. So it’s really important that when we all are talking about digital rights, we center the experiences of marginalized groups – young women and girls, female journalists, women human rights defenders, activists – when we talk about democracy in the digital age, because these experiences have a lot to teach us," added Dad.
To read more of the conversation click here.
"On one hand we have governments scrambling to acquire technologies and pass laws that would allow them to control the internet and dominate the pervasive narratives in these spaces. The loss of control over the information we consume and who gets to speak has been troubling for governments with long histories of interrupted and weak democratic rule. Even in countries where rule of law is strong, we – what we have seen is that they also struggle to come up with really good regulations, the regulations that respect international human rights framework.
And on the other hand, we have powerful platforms dominating this space with so much space, profit margins, power to control content and our data, and often we have seen that – in my experience, the decade-long work, that we have seen that they are mostly unaccountable towards their – towards the governments but also mainly towards the users who should be the center of the conversation in these spaces.
And this sort of throws up fundamental question about democracy: Do we want powerful tech companies to decide our democratic future? And while we are looking into these questions about governments and powerful companies, I think it’s important to talk about solutions also, and there is this one solution which is self-regulatory model. It’s an independent – Meta’s Oversight Board that the company came up with a solution to hold itself accountable.
But the question is: Are they holding themself accountable independently and transparently? And the answer is that just this model that came up three years ago, where the people who are actually making decisions around content moderation of this platform are from diverse background. I sit on the board. I am from global majority. English is not my first language. I bring experiences of the marginalized groups not only from Pakistan but South Asia. But then telling companies sitting on this board that the decision that you are making are not truly democratic, are not following international human rights framework, and then come up with solution to tell them what they can do in these situations. And how we are making ourselves transparent is that – actually releasing our reports, the progress that we have made, the progress that the company has made so far. So I think these are the regulatory models I feel are so important to hold these companies accountable."