By Sam de Silva
In late May, I participated in Numun Fund’s three-day Disinfo Co-Lab in Bangkok. I was working as a consultant with Luminate’s Asia team, and fortunately for me, I was the only one from the team who was free and available to attend. The three days I spent at the Co-Lab provided some invaluable insights into what we can do differently to support and address tech-facilitated harms and violence.
Numun’s Co-Lab was about addressing disinformation – a massive and complex problem that is impacting all our lives directly and indirectly. The approach was to bring diverse groups together who could discuss and understand the problem at a deeper level, and then collaboratively design projects that would contribute to tackling disinformation.
Numun Fund’s team has a long and respected history working in the feminist tech space, and they were able to bring together a unique group of individuals and organisations to participate at the Co-Lab. Those who attended were critical of patriarchy and the systems of power that continue to drive disinformation and tech-facilitated violence. They also had a history of fighting injustices and, most importantly, they were open-minded, willing to learn, and excited about the possibilities the Co-Lab and Numun had to offer. Not everyone came from the same type of organisation or experience. As Numun’s team stated at the start of the Co-Lab, shifting the needle requires a multidisciplinary approach, and Numun had intentionally curated a group of participants that could inform not only our understanding of the problem through a feminist lens and from a global majority perspective but also design solutions that would be effective in addressing the damage the tech platforms were inflicting. Participants either lived in Asia or had connections with Asia, and we all agreed with a participant who said that European solutions won’t necessarily work for those of us in Asia. There was a real sense that it was important and possible for us from the Region to use our imagination, expertise and passion to tackle disinformation and push back against the platforms.
The Co-Lab validated that we need to better frame and be more precise when we talk about the damage tech companies – big and small – are doing to our humanity, the institutions that are supposed to govern us, and the world we live in. And to understand and address this massive problem requires a multidisciplinary approach that is going to have to be collaborative. Throughout the Co-Lab, I kept coming up with an activity that might have some impact, only to realise after a few more minutes of discussion that another activity was needed to address another part of the problem. One participant described disinformation as a hydra, which is a fitting metaphor and helps us think through the complex responses that will be required. We have to zoom out and think deeply not only about the multifaceted nature of the disinformation problem but also how to design the plethora of coordinated activities and actions that will be required.
Some time ago, I was involved in organising events that brought civil society and tech communities together to solve problems. These social-impact hackathons recognised that civil society alone may not be able to address social challenges and explored how technology can be used to augment efforts. The events brought together mostly young people working at civil society organisations and tech developers and entrepreneurs. Teams were formed around specific problems that were identified and presented by civil society, and they would collaborate over a two or three-day period, often without much sleep, to understand the problems, ideate concepts, and design solutions. While many of the solution ideas were interesting, they rarely progressed beyond the event. It was very difficult to get the groups to collaborate with each other without external facilitation and funding. Civil society organisations remained in their lanes, and while some of the tech developers became interested in social issues, they did not have the deep understanding required to analyse the problems to design effective solutions. Positive collaboration, especially between groups that had only recently met each other, is extremely difficult to realise.
Funding is another major challenge. Even if there was a willingness to collaborate on solving problems, support is needed to cover the time and effort of those involved. And when technology is part of the solution, the costs can increase significantly. Back then, donors were reluctant to fund activities beyond a two or three-year project, making it virtually impossible to support long-term collaborations. I know that similar funding challenges remain today, and those organisations, like Numun, who are setting up environments to foster and facilitate collaborative activities need to get more creative on how to access and provide sustainable long-term support.
Today, the landscape has shifted significantly from ten years ago. There are highly knowledgeable people from a range of sectors – civil society, legal, policy, academic, advocacy – who are deep thinkers on problems such as disinformation and open to participating in multidisciplinary collaboration to drive lasting systemic change. During the Co-Lab, the analysis of disinformation was relevant and important for us in imagining solutions. I would have liked to have spent more time discussing the financial motivations of not just those producing the disinformation but also the tech platforms that are distributing this harmful and dangerous content. One participant described disinformation as a feature, not a bug – but perhaps analysing the role of tech platforms as part of a capitalist-military system probably needs its own Co-Lab.
Three days was way too short to tackle these big challenges, and the Numun team must be congratulated for facilitating everyone to not only have a rich and thought-provoking discussion about disinformation but also to have us conceptualise and present a number of collaborative projects that were seed-funded by Numun Fund.
The Disinfo Co-Lab was a success, and the model is important to get the ball rolling, but where that ball rolls and how it reshapes itself along the way will require longer-term guidance and support from Numun and other funders if we are to effectively dismantle the disinformation hydra and the powerful systems that continue to feed it.