Table of Contents

Digital technologies have real consequences in the world. So, laws are passed and enforced, constraining how technology can be build, sold and operated.

There seems to be a gap of unsaid discourse between the development of the technology and the acknowledgement of the structural issues in the decision making system leading to monopoly and power accumulation.

Every day, we use technologies either lawfully or not. Every day, governing institutions also use technologies on us, either lawfully or not.

Speaking up about the effects of all these uses is what we call tech advocacy.

We speak to the people in our communities. We address governments or institutions. We address the companies building and selling these technologies. We can make our voice heard better when we speak in unison with others, delivering the same message, making the related demands in solidarity.

Professionals who work with technology, techies, also belong to the spaces where advocacy happens.

Where have all the techies gone?

More than ever, technology is being portrayed as apolitical and neutral.

The development of technologies is often talked about without contextualizing power relations in place, nor how they shape society. In this way, a gap starts widening between the structural problems entangled in existing dominant model, resulting in people facing problems in their daily lives that technology promises and fails ato address.

While technical solutions sometimes exist for important privacy issues they are most of the time not brought at a possibility, neither are the structural issues honestly addressed.

The story of "apolitical technology" reduces the perceived liability of the entities that develop and sell software and hardware.

This impacts both techies and non techies persons. On the one hand it does not set good conditions for meaningful technical choices as they are depending on the decision of those entities.

Furthermore, if these products are seen as neutral, then it's less likely that they will be in favor of legislation that addresses how software can be built, operated or sold.

Professionals working on digital technologies (affectionately called techies) and are less likely to perceive themselves as responsible for the effects that software and hardware produce in the world. As a result of this, they are less likely to feel they have something in common with their co-workers, bosses and subordinates. Collective action among those who have technical knowledge becomes more rare.

The result of the "apolitical technology" story is that the people who have deep knowledge about technology are often missing from the spaces where advocacy is being done.

Getting techies into advocacy

Organizations and affinity groups that advocate for technologies that support human rights can benefit from the involvement of tech professionals. Advocacy efforts make use of technologies, while simultaneously critiquing technosolutionism, namely an over-reliance on software to solve problems.

The expertise of techies is a counter-balance to the empty promises of technosolutionism. Advocacy is at its strongest when it offers a lucid evaluation of the inner workings of technology and the effects it can produce. Techies are also well-positioned to audit technological implementations, and offer feedback outlining what can be improved and secured. They can also sound the alarm when existing implementations or proposals constitue a threat to human rights, or discriminate against vulnerable categories.

Organizing efforts often require infrastructure, both software and hardware, to function. Techies with solid knowledge of security and privacy can protect their colleagues, while also helping disseminate campaign messages through digital communication. Sometimes, a campaign makes use of the same platforms that it critiques.

The stories we tell

The stories of hackers and whistleblowers have shaped what techies dream of, as early as their adolescent years. The ingenuity and courage of the people in these stories have fed into an image of the techie that uses their knowledge righteously. However, these are also rather individualistic stories.

We lack similar stories of techies acting in solidarity with popular movements. Stories of groups of security professionals that keep the communications of activists safe while they campaign for human rights. Stories of sysadmins that blow the whistle on the egregious resource consumption of private companies. Stories of academics who turn their courses into discussions that shape the understanding of the political nature of technologies for their students.

Such heroes exist in our communities. Such acts of courage and selflessness already happen.

We explore several such categories of stories that can help inspire and motivate techies to join digital rights advocacy.

Tech advocacy curricula

University programs are often very demanding and leave little time for students to explore other interests. As technology is shaping our world, its production cannot be thought in isolation of other topics. Every curricula that teaches technical subjects, be it in computer science or engineering, must therefore bring discussions of ethics, politics and social sciences into the classroom.

In order to act, we must understand what's at stake. Then, we must have a good grasp of the forces we face. This is why a curricula for digital rights must include an inter-disciplinary view of the interplay between technology, society and governance.

This kind of curricula is welcome in all the environments where technical subjects are being taught. Professional reconversion courses, "coding bootcamps" and even extra-curricular study groups would all benefit from introducing a multi-disciplinary approach to teaching people to build and maintain digital technologies.

Grassroots events centering on technology

Technical conferences sometimes present an uncanny mix: commercial companies present their for-profit technologies side by side with activists and advocates who either critique the same technology or try to organize around building and maintaining free and open source alternatives. At times, the incentive to secure funding is at odds with allowing and platforming digital rights advocacy at such conferences. The result is that critique and political contextualization is pushed out of events.

The prestige and reputation of technical conferences are often sustained by stories and the enthusiasm of participants. Without this human element, the conferences which have become hostile to digital rights advocacy can easily lose their appeal.

In order to make room, once more, for the work of digital rights advocacy, we may have to rebuild the infrastructure of technical events and conferences, starting from the grassroots. Instead of attending conferences where critical discussion of technologies is no longer permitted, or where free and open source software is deplatformed we can come together in smaller numbers, in regional events. We can rebuild these spaces in a manner that is aware of the importance of volunteering at events, supporting them by word of mouth and financially.

Grassroots organizing to fund the development of technology

Fewer governmental resources are going into funds that support the development of open-source software. Fewer private funds go into maintaining and operating critical infrastructure for social movements. As of 2024, the decline of this kind of funding has accelerated.

Technology production and infrastructure should be available and accessible to all, as public goods. When it is possible, public funds should be used to suuport the people working on such projects. In order to ensure that these technologies remain accessible, it is also important to organize our resilience within our own communities.

Ultimately, the goal not only to ensure that the people who do the good work of building and maintaining such projects can lead a decent life, with their everyday needs met. Another crucial component of self-organizing such funds is the continous practice of solidarity and building resilient social structures.

Alternative funding structures can be as simple as a group of techies pooling a small fraction of their salaries together, and offering it as a monthly donation, to those working on open-source projects that they want to support. The end users of such technologies can also organize their own supportive network to ensure that development and maintenance continues.

One of the stories that often stands in the way of these grassroot funding efforts is the myth that software is used by individuals, be they people, companies, or governments. To counter this, we can instead tell the story of the inter-connected nature of technology. Users are connected to the creators, maintainers and all the people who support each other in the quest for a decent life.

Labor unions and organizing one's workplace

Inside for-profit companies, there are only a handful of mechanisms that allow employees to have power over management decisions. Techies can find themselves in the undignified situation of working on software and hardware that is being actively used to threaten human rights. In this situation, each individual is powerless in a legal and social sense. Sometimes, the distress they feel may become so overwhelming that apathy sets in.

In order to counter this distressing feeling that an individual can't do anything to change the course of what technology is built, what festures it has, and how it is being deployed, we must remind each other of the legal and social structures that give employees power.

Labour unions function according to laws that differ between countries, so it's not easy to talk about them as a single entity. In some cases, existing lebour unions are under heavy political influence, and may not be helpful to techies who want to express disagreement with the way in which technology is developed.

In addition to unionizing, there are other dynamics that employees can resort to. Labour strikes are another option, and organizing with fellow employees to put pressure on the power structure within a company can also be done outside of already-established legal frameworks.

In this case, digital rights advocates, regardless of their domains, can help revive the practice or workforce organizing by revisiting the legal frameworks. Discussing the possibilities and limitations can go a long way to build new ways of resisting an erosion of digital rights from within for-profit companies.

Still more structural funding possibilities can be imagined and described, engaging structurally the entities who use the software in their maintainance. Indeed it is one of the big lies of tech monopolies that our tools are standardised and individual apropriable, while in fact they could serve a community, a guild, a corporation or any other form of association who organizes to support their development and maintenance integrating technical persons in their process and vice versa.

More resources

Historically hacker groups have worked to counter privacy damages organized by corporations and governments. Their depolitisation have brought them out from activist spaces.

A number of successful initiatives, stories and naratives have managed to rebuilt the trust of techies in the process of advocacy, and bring them back into this space. Of course, all of these stories are more nuanced and complicated than the glances we cast in this article. It is important to relate these stories.

• A number of hackers have united to organize and promote technology that does not contribute to genocide: Tech for Palestine.
• Tecchies and non tecchies come together in the margins of important Open Source events to organise better away from their big tech sponsors. An example of this is OFFDEM.
• They develop syndicate systems for collaboration and organisation.
• Dedicated unions to adress social organisation accross the software industry: Tech Workers Coalition, Solidaires Informatique.

Acknowledgements

This position is the result of a beautiful collaboration between khaleesi (Chaos Computer Club), natacha (petites singularités) and Alex (Asociația pentru Tehnologie și Internet).