Founder’s Note
DEF x ARISE Campaign
In July 2025, the Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF), in partnership with the ARISE (Accountability and Responsibility in South’s Ecosystems) Community, formally launched a collective civil society campaign focused on platform accountability. This initiative responds to the growing urgency to address the unchecked power of major tech platforms and their disproportionate harms on communities across the Global South.
Anchoring the launch was a collaborative campaign with Point of View (PoV), a long-time ally working at the intersection of gender, sexuality, and digital rights. PoV issued a public call to hold Meta across its platforms Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp accountable for enabling caste-based hate speech, gendered online violence, algorithmic bias, and the erasure of LGBTQ+ and disabled voices. These harms are not incidental but systemic, and they reflect broader failures of platform governance that continue to marginalise and silence vulnerable groups.
The campaign is housed under the shared banner of #TransformThePlatform, which will serve as a common frame for cross-regional work on digital harms and accountability. DEF and ARISE see this as a space not only for raising demands, but also for building shared analysis and strategy, particularly from the perspective of communities whose experiences are often excluded from mainstream tech discourse.
Initial activities under the campaign include social media outreach, ideating anthology with contributions from experts across the globe, live-talks with key persons working on this theme, video explainers and collaborations to develop advocacy materials and public research. A series of dialogues and position papers are also in the pipeline, aimed at deepening the collective understanding of how caste, gender, sexuality, and disability intersect with platform infrastructure and content moderation practices. Rather than functioning as a single-issue or one-time mobilisation, the campaign is being shaped as an evolving space where civil society actors across regions can contribute, adapt, and lead. From rural media practitioners to queer rights organisations and AI ethicists, a wide range of contributors are already plugged in, bringing unique perspectives to the conversation.
Why do we need to talk about Platforms?
Digital platforms today are not just communication tools, in fact they are infrastructure. From accessing public services to shaping political discourse, they mediate nearly every aspect of daily life. Yet, their governance remains opaque, extractive, and profoundly unequal. In the Global South, these inequalities are sharper with communities facing algorithmic bias, unchecked hate speech, digital surveillance, and platform policies designed far from the realities they affect.
As platforms expand their reach into education, health, finance, and governance, the consequences of their failures are no longer virtual. With platformisation deepening across sectors and geographies, civil society must play a central role in shaping the norms, policies, and demands that define our digital futures. This moment is not just about regulating Big Tech,but about reclaiming power, reimagining digital spaces, and centering voices long excluded from decisions about the platforms they rely on.
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