What does building an intersectional feminist internet look like?
State of the Internet Lecture 2022: “Operation Reboot”
This is a lightly edited English version of the 2022 State of the Internet lecture, organised yearly by Waag. For an abridged version in English, see here. For the Dutch version as published by the Groene Amsterdammer, see here.
Should we keep “tweaking” and “fixing” the Internet, or is it time to radically reimagine our societies and reevaluate how the internet can serve all of us?
The internet was once envisaged as a place for experimentation. For freedom to create and connect. For openness and creativity and boundless opportunity. However, what we have today is quite different. The internet we now have is broken, in all the ways that mirror the unequal power structures in our society.
The internet we now have is broken, in all the ways that mirror the unequal power structures in our society.
What we have is a piece of global infrastructure that is driven by all the negative aspects of capitalism; which fuels and perpetuates racism, exploitation, State repression, censorship, and surveillance. Yet, over the past 30 years it has become a deeply integrated part of nearly all aspects of our lives. Can we imagine what the internet could be if we envisaged it to serve not the interests of big tech and States, but of the communities and people who use it, each and every one of them?
Can we imagine what the internet could be if we envisaged it to serve not the interests of big tech and States, but of the communities and people who use it, each and every one of them?
In order to even consider rebuilding it in a way that doesn’t make us end up in a similar place, to genuinely begin “operation reboot”, we need to first form a vision of a different type of internet. Today, I will sketch the contours of the shape such a vision could take: that of an internet that is an intersectional feminist space, community-centred, pluralist, and genuinely representative of the myriad of lived experiences our society holds. When I say “sketch the contours”, this is intentional framing. It is not to signal a lack of ambition, rather, it is an acknowledgement that reimagining the internet is a collective affair, something that should be done jointly, and not just by one person or group of persons.
“We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before” wrote John Perry Barlow in 1996
“We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before” wrote John Perry Barlow, one of the founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in 1996. “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” was written shortly after activity on the internet had taken a substantial flight in the mid-1990s and it was in part a response to the US government’s attempt to regulate some of the content that was appearing on the world wide web. The 1996 Communications Decency Act sought to regulate pornographic material on the Internet. Unsuccessfully, as one year later the US Supreme Court struck down the act’s anti-indecency provisions in the case of Reno v. ACLU. But, as we all very well know, it certainly wasn’t the last attempt to regulate the online space in the US or elsewhere.
Reading the Declaration 25+ years later is fascinating. First, there is a sense of boundless optimism about what the internet — which is equated with “the future” — would bring. The declaration makes very clear that the vision of “cyberspace” is that of a space where openness and freedom reign. Barlow writes that “We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.” Everyone is welcome in this space, which can be entered “without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth”. If conflicts were to arise, they would be dealt with through self-regulation, based on a not further defined “social contract’’, but which the text hints at is unique, because, in the words of Barlow, “Our world is different.”
Second, the Declaration is directed exclusively at States, not companies. When Barlow wrote his manifesto, regulation by States was perceived to be the biggest threat to cyberspace’s independence. There is some rather flowery language, describing these States as “weary giants of flesh and steel”.
It is also clear, and that is a third key element to note, that the States the Declaration speaks to are mainly North American and Western European. “The world” referred to is clearly the world as seen by a privileged, white American man. It is interesting to mention here that the Declaration was posted from Davos, the town in the Swiss Alps that hosts the annual World Economic Forum, where the rich and famous have been gathering every year since 1971 to discuss how they can “improve the state of the world.”
“The world” referred to in Barlow’s Declaration is clearly the world as seen by a privileged, white American man.
The Declaration is rooted in libertarianism, stating that the internet’s governance will emerge from enlightened self-interest and all thinkers referred to in it are Western: Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison, De Tocqueville, and Brandeis. For people like Barlow, this model of “enlightened self-interest” and “freedom” would have worked out well. For others, probably not so much.
It is interesting that the “you” being addressed in the Declaration are States. And it is equally interesting to ask the question who the “we” is that Barlow keeps on referring to. Looking at the history of the development of the internet, and the erasure of women from the mainstream narrative about how the internet was built, it seems safe to assume that the “we” being referred to is someone very similar to the mythical “reference man”. The fictional white man between 20–30 years, who weighs 70 kg, is 1.80 tall, and lives in Western Europe or North America. It is the man you’ll have trouble identifying in most spaces, even in those geographical areas, yet for whom most products are designed and built.
A final noteworthy point is that the Declaration seeks to detach “cyberspace” from the “physical world”. Barlow writes: “I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us.”; “Cyberspace does not lie within your borders.” He describes it as a type of metaphysical space that “consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself”. Rather than connecting this new utopian social contract with existing struggles, it seeks to detach itself from it. Here, it is good to recall that the 1990s saw a number of fundamental crises and struggles unfold, including the Gulf War; genocide in Rwanda; wars in the Balkans; a series of financial crises across the globe; the Los Angeles riots following the police assault of Rodney King; debt crises across Latin America; crackdowns on free speech, activism and political opposition in China; and a world failing to wake up to the unfolding climate crisis.
What the Declaration on the Independence of Cyberspace shows us is a vision of the internet that (1) is based on the context and worldview of the privileged few, (2) has the ambition to further disconnect itself from the context its a product of, and (3) has a preoccupation with threats from government regulation alone.
What the Declaration on the Independence of Cyberspace shows us is a vision of the internet that (1) is based on the context and worldview of the privileged few, (2) has the ambition to further disconnect itself from the context its a product of, and (3) has a preoccupation with threats from government regulation alone.
That was 25 years ago. How did this vision work out in practice? It is not all doom and gloom. Even if the internet may be broken, it has brought us a number of good things.
It is not all doom and gloom. Even if the internet may be broken, it has brought us a number of good things.
First, the internet has given us an amazing opportunity to connect. We can send and exchange information in text, image, and sound across borders at high speed and low cost. According to various estimates, well over 300 billion emails are sent and received worldwide on a daily basis. WhatsApp, one of the most popular messaging apps, facilitates the sending of over 100 billion messages each day, and Zoom, the video call app that saw its growth spurred on by the Covid-19 pandemic, registers over 3.3 trillion annual meeting minutes. For those of us fortunate to have access to a stable internet connection and a device that we can freely use, connecting for work, schooling, or social purposes has never been as easy as it is now.
First, the internet has given us an amazing opportunity to connect.
A second positive the internet has brought is the possibility to strengthen and further galvanise protests and movements. We of course had the Arab Spring in the early 2010s, but the 2020s brought us two other great examples: the Black Lives Matter movement worldwide and the #EndSARS protests in Nigeria.
A second positive the internet has brought is the possibility to strengthen and further galvanise protests and movements.
The Black Lives Matter hashtag and movement was born in the summer of 2013, when labour organiser Alicia Garza responded on her Facebook page to the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the man who murdered Trayvon Martin. To refresh everyone’s memory: Trayvon was a 17-year old Black boy, who went to the convenience store to buy some Skittles and a bottle of juice when visiting his father in Florida. As he was returning home, he was spotted by Zimmerman, a 28-year old insurance-fraud investigator who was captain of the neighbourhood patrol in the residential community where Trayvon was staying. Ignoring explicit instructions from the local police, whom Zimmerman immediately called when he saw a 17-year old wearing a hoodie and minding his own business, Zimmerman approached and executed Trayvon, claiming he was acting in “self defence”.
Following the murder of George Floyd by US police in May 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement swelled in numbers, with protests not only taking place across the United States, but also internationally. Social media facilitated much of the organising and allowed information, images and videos of protests to be instantly shared with millions worldwide.
Another protest that we saw in 2020 was #EndSARS in Nigeria. The movement had started in 2017 to protest against police brutality in the country by the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). Nigerians have been sharing stories and video evidence of how SARS officers engaged in crimes including kidnapping, murder, theft, rape, torture, unlawful arrests and detention, and even extrajudicial killings for years. The protests were reinvigorated in October 2020 after new abuses were brought to light, prompting people to take to the streets in large numbers. The protests built on social media, drawing ever greater numbers of people demanding change, and the violent State response to some of the demonstrations was live streamed for all the world to see.
A third and final positive is the unprecedented way in which the internet has facilitated access to information. Here, I am not referring to the often-hailed fiction of the “marketplace of ideas” — we’ll get to that in a moment — but rather to the fact that the internet is a huge trove of information that is easy to access. It was probably never easier to access information and ideas that are not provided through the “mainstream” channels, be it political ideas or ideology or the simple act of being able to view movies or television series that show people who look like you in central roles, when the main tv channels are still serving up the same whitewashed, regressive picture.
A third and final positive is the unprecedented way in which the internet has facilitated access to information.
But: it can’t all be rainbows and unicorns, or we wouldn’t be here today to consider if and how we could start again. The positives I just outlined all come with a flipside to them as well.
Yes, the volume of information we are sending is enormous. But does this also mean we are connecting or have we created a marketplace?
To begin with our ability to connect and the fact that we can send and exchange information across borders at high speed and low cost. Yes, the volume of information we are sending is enormous. But does this also mean we are connecting or have we created a marketplace? I believe that we are seeing a commodification of connection at large scale, where we are not only replicating, but reinforcing oppressive capitalist market dynamics online.
I believe that we are seeing a commodification of connection at large scale, where we are not only replicating, but reinforcing oppressive capitalist market dynamics online.
What we are seeing is the most expansive version of the idea of surveillance capitalism as described by Shoshana Zuboff, which addresses the way big tech companies collect personal information not only to predict our behaviour, but also to influence and modify it. It is the fundamental capitalist co-optation of the internet “freedom” Barlow and his contemporaries were arguing for.
Not only “are we the product” because our connections are taking place on platforms owned by big tech companies, who are continuously seeking to further monetise and manipulate our behaviour, we are being pushed into participating in a capitalist game if we even want to have even a faint chance of being heard. What will your online expression be worth if it is not read, seen or heard by anyone? If it is taken down, invisibilised by a platform’s algorithm, or perhaps simply because you did not adhere to the “rules of the game” sufficiently to garner a big enough group of followers for your message to have an impact? What if you don’t want to be the “CEO of me” and spend endless hours curating your “personal brand”?
What if you don’t want to be the “CEO of me” and spend endless hours curating your “personal brand”?
At best, you will not be heard or seen. At worst, someone else will do the monetisation for you. “My feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit!” Flavia Dzodan wrote in 2011, critisising a number of problematic manifestations of white feminism. Since then, her words have been appropriated by others without attribution, often by the very “feminists” she was criticising, who conveniently disregarded the full contents of the essay she published, and the phrase has been monetised in the form of all sorts of merchandise she never saw a penny of.
“My feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit!” Flavia Dzodan wrote in 2011. Since then, her words have been appropriated by others without attribution, and the phrase monetised in the form of all sorts of merchandise she never saw a penny of.
Rather than being an independent space from the global capitalist economic system, the internet as we see it today sits in it. Squarely and firmly, facilitating the feeding off each other by toxic influencer culture, troll factories, content moderation practices that oppress marginalised voices, and much more.
While social media can support organising and protests, and strengthen and further galvanise movements, this online sharing of information — photos, protest details, live streaming videos — is also where the greatest vulnerability lies for movement organising. Surveillance becomes easy with so much information at the ready. Governments have made grateful use of this, of course, a variety of private companies have been able to monetise it. By monitoring messages and images posted on social media, sometimes through the use of fake user accounts, and combining that with other information, it is possible to identify upcoming protests and even individual protesters. This can lead to disproportionate crackdowns on specific groups of activists. For example, last year alone, Israel arrested 390 Palestinians for allegedly having “incited violence” via social media.
Another problematic aspect is the normalisation of live streaming and sharing, over and over again, violence committed against Black bodies
There are other problematic aspects to mention here. One concerns the normalisation of live streaming and sharing, over and over again, violence committed against Black bodies. While there is important evidentiary value in some of these images and videos, there also is a level of rebroadcasting that cannot be qualified in any other way than as “trauma porn”. Blue Telusma in her article for The Grio defined this as “any type of media — be it written, photographed or filmed — which exploits traumatic moments of adversity to generate buzz, notoriety or social media attention”. It is also important to recall here that this is just the latest, digital, manifestation of a history of trivialising the abuse and killing of Black people.
Armchair activism, the idea that liking a few posts on Instagram and retweeting your favourite activists on Twitter means you are supporting a struggle, is real
Another problematic aspect is the conflation that can occur between following movements online and true engagement. Armchair activism, the idea that liking a few posts on Instagram and retweeting your favourite activists on Twitter means you are supporting a struggle, is real. The “great awokening”, as I half-jokingly like to call it, that occurred in the wake of the 2020 BLM protests is a particularly good illustration of this problem.
Actual anti-racist work is hard, never-ending, and unglamorous.
Many white people took to social media to publicly announce that they were committed to educating themselves on racism and white supremacy, started book clubs, and followed prominent anti-racist leaders online. How many of them are calling out racism, speaking up and making space for people of colour, donating to anti-racist organisations now, on a daily basis and when no one is watching? Actual anti-racist work is hard, never-ending, and unglamorous. For many, posting a black square on Instagram for a day probably was enough.
Last, but not least, comes our ability to access information. The internet is a huge trove of information that is easy to access. But: whose information? And easy to access for whom?
A feature for the Guardian by Holly Young says that the first language used on the internet was almost certainly English and that in the mid 1990s English made up an estimated 80% of the internet’s content. Given that at least 75% of the world does not speak English, this is… notable. This changed over the years, however: English now represents around 30% of web content and French, German, Spanish and Chinese are now all part of the top 10 languages online. This top 10 makes up 82% of the total content on the internet, yet there is a total number of about 6,000 languages in use today. If your language is not spoken online, what information can you access?
The top 10 languages online make up 82% of the total content on the internet, yet there is a total number of about 6,000 languages in use today. If your language is not spoken online, what information can you access?
No discussion of the current state of the internet would be complete without mentioning the big tech platforms and their regulation of speech online. I actually think that “regulation” — or its counterpart, “content moderation” — is a misnomer as, in the end, the tech platforms are businesses, working to maximise profit, and they will manipulate information streams within their sphere of influence to do exactly that. This happens in countless ways: by taking down content that constitutes legitimate speech, by not taking down content that goes beyond a “robust debate” and creates an unsafe or harmful space for specific users, especially marginalised and racialised groups, and by obfuscating these choices through automation, consistently refusing to provide full transparency on how content is “moderated”, and not providing any clear channels or systems for people to contest these decisions. If you consider all this, the idea of having any kind of “public debate” on these platforms becomes literally incredible.
The state of our internet has an impact on our freedom to associate and assemble, our due process rights and right to liberty, but also our right to equality, work, (mental) health, and much, much more.
What I hope is that these issues illustrate how important it is to look at more than just free speech — which was the focus of Barlow and his contemporaries — and data privacy — which tends to be the preoccupation of many digital rights activists — when assessing the state of our current digital space. The state of our internet has an impact on our freedom to associate and assemble, our due process rights and right to liberty, but also our right to equality, work, (mental) health, and much, much more. The previous organisation I founded, the Digital Freedom Fund, worked under the mantra that “digital rights are human rights”. With this, we sought to underline that all our human rights can be engaged in the digital context: not only our civil and political rights — such as the free speech and data privacy rights I just referred to — but also our economic, social, and cultural rights. We are further building on this in the context of the new initiative we launched this year, Systemic Justice, which works to advance racial, social, and economic justice across both digital and non-digital spaces. In the end, the divide between “online” and “offline” which Barlow still thought could be maintained is a strange fictional construct, which I expect we will all start letting go of soon.
In the end, the divide between “online” and “offline” is a strange fictional construct, which I expect we will all start letting go of soon.
I am referring to human rights, while fully appreciating that this is by no means a perfect framework. The human rights standards we consider as “universal”: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the two treaties that emanated from it, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, are often criticised as an ineffective, Western imperialist system. However, they do still give us a good entry point to reflect on how harms might be addressed and prevented.
Applied to this topic, they also help illuminate where challenges lie. Having a framework is not enough: human rights only mean something when that system of standards is acted upon: States must enable the exercising of these rights and cannot actively infringe on the rights of their citizens. And, when States do not abide by these rules, there must be independent authorities where citizens can go to enforce them.
Yet, in our digital space, the power often lies with a completely different set of actors: the companies and platforms we allowed to set the rules for us. The power lies there because we placed it there: the internet, as all our systems, is a product of the capitalist, racist patriarchy and its power structures, which we choose to uphold.
The internet, as all our systems, is a product of the capitalist, racist patriarchy and its power structures, which we choose to uphold
This also explains why we cannot “fix” the internet. Unless we change our power structures, the systems we produce will always be harmful to not only those we wish to keep away from power, but all of us.
If we continue tinkering with the status quo, we keep ourselves trapped in the same frame, forever fighting symptoms instead of addressing root causes.
We need a beacon to set our compass to. What would an internet that is an intersectional feminist space, community-centred, pluralist, and genuinely representative look like? I propose to start from the following to build a common vision.
What would an internet that is an intersectional feminist space, community-centred, pluralist, and genuinely representative look like?
This internet would be based on a holistic understanding of where “cyberspace” resides. Not in some fictional space, separated from the “material world” as Barlow called it, but intertwined with all aspects of our lives, and therefore interconnected with all our human rights; not just privacy and expression, but the full spectrum of rights, including the rights to science, culture, and education, health, and social security.
This internet would place higher values on intersectionality, community, genuine pluralism and meaningful representation than on possessive individualism and social hierarchy, which in today’s society we all too often see playing out through hierarchies of race, class, and gender.
This internet would be a tool for both individual and collective liberation, creativity, connectivity and growth.
This internet would be a tool for both individual and collective liberation, creativity, connectivity and growth.
And this internet would be accessible for all. This goes beyond closing the digital divide and lowering the cost and other entry barriers for accessing the internet; it also relates to how digital spaces are designed and managed. Inclusive design practices are currently treated as “add ons” or “nice to haves” in the current digital environment. They should be the root and foundation to how we build the (new) internet.
What does this mean in practice?
In line with what I said earlier: we should start by dismantling the racist, capitalist patriarchy. Others are much better at formulating the roadmap to making that happen — I am just a lawyer and I focus on making the law work as a tool that can contribute to that change.
What I can do is set out a number of elements of the internet such a society might produce. In doing so, I am building not only on the inspiration provided by many thinkers on intersectionality, anti-racism, and abolition,* but also on the work done by others in translating these concepts for the digital context, including Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, the Association for Progressive Communications, and the African Declaration of Internet Rights and Freedoms.
The building blocks can be assigned to three pillars: first, autonomy and agency; second, participation; and third, anti-capitalist structures.
The building blocks for an intersectional feminist internet can be assigned to three pillars: first, autonomy and agency; second, participation; and third, anti-capitalist structures.
The autonomy and agency pillar consists of three main building blocks: informed consent, autonomy and agency, and a new system of governance.
For informed consent we need to create a culture in which proper ethics and holistic practices of consent are built into the way we design, build, and operate online spaces. This requires meaningful transparency and giving people true agency in how they choose to engage online. Not a vague opt in/out of preset terms and conditions that are unnegotiable.
Second, autonomy and agency means giving people data sovereignty or stewardship over their personal data. This is more than abolishing manifestations of surveillance capitalism, such as AdTech (the online trading of data profiles for targeted advertising). It also ties into the ability to move your data when and to where you choose.
Third, we need a new system of governance, one that is rooted in abolitionist principles. The dominant narrative in our societies is that “bad behaviour” requires policing and disciplining, a way of thinking that is so normalised and engrained in our collective thinking that this has also been the response to addressing “online harms”. Instead of reinforcing a culture of surveillance and punishment, we need to build a practice of examining root causes of the systemic and interpersonal forms of harm we encounter.
The second pillar, participation, consists of the building blocks design, access, and safety.
For design, we should move to a system of community-centred design. A great place to start is the “design justice” practice described by Sasha Costanza-Chock. Design justice is an approach to design that is led by marginalised communities and explicitly aims to challenge structural inequalities instead of reproducing them.
Access means, as I mentioned earlier, not only universal, affordable, unconditional, and equal access to the internet for all, it also means accessible for all regardless of ability, language, or other characteristics. Inclusive design practices should be the root and foundation to how we build online spaces.
This also means that the third building block, safety, needs to be a foundational feature. Everyone should be able to engage on the internet under the expectation to remain free from violence.
Safety needs to be a foundational feature. Everyone should be able to engage on the internet under the expectation to remain free from violence.
The third pillar, anti-capitalist structures, looks at severing the ties between capitalist actors and our internet infrastructure, and putting systems and practices in place that will prevent them from regaining dominance.
The first building block is dismantling the infrastructure that facilitates the surveillance-industrial complex. The technology and systems that facilitates our individual profiles to be sold to the highest bidder for targeted advertising, manipulates our behaviour, and harvests data for law enforcement agencies needs to be abolished.
The second building block is looking at alternatives: community-owned infrastructure, and working with free/libre and open source software, tools, and platforms.
The third building block, interoperability, is key here. For example, to make the idea of autonomy and agency from the first pillar a reality, we need to be able to have meaningful options to not only move our data across platforms or communities, but also for interaction between them.
None of these ideas are revolutionary. This in and of itself is something to sit with: real, lasting change — creating a society and corresponding digital space that is not rooted in exploitation and extraction — doesn’t require magic and fireworks.
None of these ideas are revolutionary. This in and of itself is something to sit with: real, lasting change — creating a society and corresponding digital space that is not rooted in exploitation and extraction — doesn’t require magic and fireworks. It requires centring our humanity, and finding comfort in sharing ownership and control with people who are different from us and making our equal right to be there a reality.
It means making different choices: choosing community instead of domination, choosing respect instead of censorship and abuse, choosing collective well-being instead of extraction, choosing solidarity instead of individualism, choosing community welfare and subsistence instead of profit.
It means making different choices: choosing community instead of domination, choosing respect instead of censorship and abuse, choosing collective well-being instead of extraction, choosing solidarity instead of individualism, choosing community welfare and subsistence instead of profit.
The choice is ours to make.
* There are so many wonderful thinkers in these areas that it is difficult to limit reference to only a few. The ones I find myself returning to regularly, however, are Audre Lorde, bell hooks, James Baldwin, and Kimberlé Crenshaw. In the Dutch context I especially look to the work Gloria Wekker and Philomena Essed have done. In making the connections to the digital context, the work of Ruha Benjamin, Safiya Noble, Joy Buolamwini, Anasuya Sengupta, Sarah Chander, and Laurence Meyer has been pioneering and inspirational.
