The Global Coalition for Tech Justice exists to create a world in which worldwide tech platforms and technologies serve the public good and uphold the dignity of all peoples. To do this, we must bring an end to Big Tech negligence and its unchecked power. The negative impacts of Big Tech on our online public spaces are being felt everywhere, resulting in real world harms, which are most acutely and unjustly experienced in the places and by the communities in the Global Majority furthest away from company headquarters. Northern powers with the highest capacity to act against Big Tech’s global harms are failing to do so. We call this the global equity crisis of tech accountability. 

 

We came together in the run up to the historic 2024 elections megacycle, following drastic cuts to trust and safety and election integrity in Big Tech companies. We called for additional investments and for transparency in election integrity plans. We asked for locally appropriate, rights-respecting content moderation and meaningful safety efforts. But Big Tech failed to step up to the plate and the global equity crisis has deepened: 

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• We have entered the age of digital oligarchy. Big Tech has achieved unprecedented, concentrated global power, acting as a rule-setter, not a rule-taker for the public space. Big Tech companies routinely act in defiance of democratic institutions and laws, while deploying armies of lobbyists to prevent new democratic rules to regulate them. Global platforms are bought by billionaires to influence politics and get populist leaders elected. 

• Big Tech’s content moderation system is broken and voluntary transparency regimes have failed. Tech companies under-resourced teams and systems for addressing harms, and despite the best efforts of some valiant tech workers, they did not appropriately enforce policies and ensure safety at scale. Rampant online hate speech resulted in innocent people being murdered. Migrant and minoritised communities were maligned and harassed across regions. Electorates were manipulated by mis-and-disinformation, and citizens’ rights to accurate information were undermined. 

• Big Tech has empowered authoritarians and jeopardized the safety of activists. Online platforms became the megaphone of choice for wannabe dictators to persecute opponents and democracy activists. Big Tech silently allowed and sometimes actively facilitated the advance of digital authoritarianism and the crushing of civic space. ​

• Big Tech is making huge sums of money from its distribution of disinformation and hate speech. Platforms profit through a dysfunctional advertising model favouring harmful, sensationalist content and unethical behaviours, as well as opaque revenue-sharing agreements that end up funding and incentivizing harm, including real-world harm. The world’s advertisers are still to act decisively to address their role, such as through responsible practices recommended in the UN Global Principles for Information integrity. 

• Big Tech-backed AI technologies were released without any regard to their inherent problems and potential consequences. We saw the signs of what’s to come. Deepfakes helped whitewash the image of some politicians to get them elected, while also being used to harass female politicians, activists and journalists across regions. AI, and the mass data extraction on which it is built, is supercharging state and corporate surveillance systems, making life-and-death decisions about people's access to basic resources and freedoms, and producing inequitable and unsustainable environmental costs due to rapidly-expanding, resource-intensive data centers.

 

We believe that principles of equity, human dignity, truth, justice, transparency and accountability should be placed at the heart of technology. In order to achieve this, we are committed to: 

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• Centering the voices and experiences of the Global Majority in global tech accountability. For too long these have been marginalised if not completely excluded. We want to support leadership in the Global Majority to set the terms of debate, not just gain a seat at the table. We want to put the Global Majority at the heart of global narratives. Solidarity has been all too fleeting from Global North allies. We will reimagine solidarity and partnership for tech justice. 

• Designing new democratic rules for Big Tech so that it no longer operates unaccountably across large swathes of the world. This means action and solidarity from the Global North where Big Tech decisions for the Global Majority are taken, collective learning and coordination, and new rights-respecting regulations in democratic countries across the Global Majority. There must be minimum global standards of transparency for all globally important platforms and technologies, so that no matter how far a country or community is from corporate headquarters, they have equal access to the information they need for the integrity and safety of their online information spaces, and can prevent related real world harms. It also means equitable, inclusive and environmentally sustainable AI, new global AI commons and a global AI industry that respects democratic and human rights. 

• A new pact for Big Tech in authoritarian and fragile or conflict-affected countries, starting with the Middle East and North Africa in its current acute crisis. All peoples, human rights defenders, dissidents, and independent media must be protected in countries where Big Tech is not subject to democratic norms and peacetime conditions.   

• Encourage and support decentralised technologies for the global majority that more readily respond to context and allow for more control and inclusive decision making processes especially from the global majority. These may include innovations around decentralised digital platforms and locally/community owned infrastructure. 

 

We believe that to go far, we go together. Collectively, we will build global tech justice.