Meteorologists expect the El Niño now building in the Pacific Ocean to be the strongest on record, peaking between September and December. This recurring warming of surface ocean waters occurs irregularly every two to seven years, temporarily raising global temperatures and reshaping rainfall worldwide.

The UN World Food Programme estimates the El Niño on the horizon could push, at minimum, 49 million people into acute food insecurity by the end of 2027 – across 45 countries already struggling to feed their populations, with the sharpest increases in Central America and southern Africa (WFP, 2026).

In South Asia, new research shows that global warming is strengthening the link between El Niño and drought in India. In Latin America, maize and bean harvests may fail in fragile parts of Nicaragua, and irrigated crops in Colombia and northeastern Brazil will most likely face water restrictions. This impacts food security further away as well; the EU imports close to 190 billion Euro of food a year from the regions most exposed. And in Europe directly, low river flows threaten hydropower and agriculture.

Those are the numbers. What concerns us at WACC just as much, however, is the story that will be told about the numbers – and how that story might affect action on climate change.

As much of the media coverage of the issue explains, El Niño is a natural cycle. However, scientists are clear that this year’s fires and heatwaves, especially in the Northern Hemisphere, are driven by fossil fuel emissions, not by El Niño, which only adds perhaps a tenth or two of a degree to a long-term warming trend.

This is creating fertile ground for disinformation campaigns seeking to deny or minimize climate change. Most advance the notion that the extreme weather events we are experiencing are a naturally occurring phenomenon and not caused by human activity.

This pattern is already visible. When Europe’s record heatwave arrived in June, social media filled with claims that the temperatures were nothing unusual, citing London heatwaves from the 1970s. After the 2024 floods in eastern Spain that killed more than 230 people, false claims spread that dams had been deliberately dismantled and that European river restoration rules caused the disaster, disinformation amplified by far-right Vox politicians.

Disinformation is not a naturally occurring phenomenon but “a tactic” the powerful use to defend the status quo, notes Philip Newell of the Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD) network. It appears, however, that the tactic has shifted.

Outright denial has largely given way to attacks on climate policy itself, amplified by generative AI and spiking whenever a heatwave, flood, or drought makes the news – which is precisely when affected communities need trustworthy information the most.

This is precisely why democratic and people-centred communication and information ecosystems, especially at the local level, are vital climate stability infrastructures that protect us all, not an optional extra.

Our partners across the world show what that looks like. For example:

• Grupo COMUNICARTE has spent decades among the people in Colombia’s high-altitude Andean páramos ecosystem, weaving conservation into local recipes, elders’ stories, and mountain legends until protection became something communities owned rather than something imposed by the authorities.
• Nepal’s Indigenous Rights Foundation broadcasts dialogues between Indigenous communities, government officials, and hydropower developers, reaching roughly a million people and making decision-makers publicly accountable.
• In the Niger Delta in Nigeria, the Media Awareness and Justice Initiative helps communities collect their own environmental data, turning complaints dismissed as anecdotal into evidence-backed reports.

None of these interventions are fact-checking operations, which is how disinformation tends to be tackled. Rather, these initiatives do something that is both more difficult and more durable – they build trust, they treat farmers and elders as knowledge holders alongside scientists, and they keep local narratives at the centre.

Disinformation struggles in places where people already know whom to believe.

At the UN climate change conference COP30 last November, 12 governments signed a first-ever “Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change,” promising what Brazil’s president, João Brant, called “a wave of truth.”

This is a welcome development. However, in most of the places El Niño will hit hardest, the key channels informing communities and fighting disinformation – community radio stations, Indigenous media networks, and local journalists – work on very little.

Funding, supporting, and protecting them is not charity nor is it optional. It is climate action.

Photo: Toa55/Shutterstock

British football expert Mark Langdon made this comment in the 22 June episode of The Guardian Football Weekly podcast, reviewing matches earlier on in the FIFA World Cup 2026.

Dubbed “the most digitally connected World Cup ever,” FIFA 2026 was brought to audiences through AI-powered highlights, real-time data visualisations, and video streaming.  I asked my go-to LLM (large language model) to apply social listening tools for a sentiment analysis of African social media chatter about Bafana Bafana’s [the South Africa national team] participation in the World Cup.

The result: “deeply divided” feelings, with historic solidarity overshadowed by a significant backlash driven by regional tensions. “South Africa’s 2-0 opening loss to Mexico became a major ‘hate-watch’ event, driven by several factors,” most importantly, xenophobic violence and treatment of African migrants in South Africa.

The LLM results further indicated strong initial pan-African solidarity for Morocco, followed swiftly by social media backlash after a controversial statement claimed to have been made by Morocco’s Sports Minister was circulated online. The backlash over the fabricated quote was compounded by “political friction, including disputes over Western Sahara and allegations of anti-Black racism.”

Conversations on the street in Nairobi and on social media recalled an incident from last year’s Africa Cup of Nations tournament. Africans had not forgotten the “Towel Gate” grudge where a Moroccan player snatched a Senegalese player’s towel.

Finally, in the deciding last match, Africans overwhelmingly favoured Spain over Argentina, 88%, according to a poll by the Spanish sports daily Marca. African support for Spain was fuelled by “a mix of sporting grievances, politics, and social justice concerns.”

Growing up in Kenya with the Saturday evening TV show Football Made in Germany made fans out of us. [The football league] Bundesliga, [football team] Bayern Munich, and [star goalkeeper Harald] Schumacher were household names. Simple, benign, good fun that brought families with a television set together.

Fast forward several decades later to the FIFA World Cup 2026. “The beautiful game” evolved into a complex spectre somewhere along the way. The lenses through which the game is viewed are layered with factors that have nothing to do with purely football. In FIFA 2026, the conditions to observe the interplay between digital connectedness and the politics of sports and identity, were in place.

Rather than passion for the game itself, politics, race, and perceptions about justice mattered more on the continent. A contagion of outrage informed by past and present events spread in borderless online communities, flowing parallel to the real-time streaming of the game. Reactions on social media encouraged copycat responses.

Africa remains the underdog in world professional football, in other sectors, and more ways than could be counted. In this World Cup however, we took home an invisible trophy.

The inaugural Global Dialogue on AI Governance marked the first time, as speakers noted, that every UN Member State had a seat at the table to discuss artificial intelligence opportunities and risks; bridging AI divides; ensuring AI is safe, secure and trustworthy; and protecting human rights.

António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General, struck a somber note in his opening address. Calling artificial intelligence “an experiment…being run on our own societies – without a plan, and without consent,” he issued three warnings: its speed, which outstrips our institutions’ ability to govern; its power, “concentrated in a handful of companies, and in a handful of countries”; and truth:

A machine-enabled lie can now persuade as effectively as the truth – and authentic evidence can be dismissed as fake.
Further eroding the integrity of our information ecosystem and undermining trust.
A society that cannot agree on what is real cannot defend itself.

The preliminary report of the International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence was also released – a must-read for anyone wanting to understand “the state of AI”.

As Panel co-chair Maria Ressa explained, the report reflects consensus among its 40 independent members, based on the evidence. “Consensus,” she said, “means you move to the centre.” So, she added, “This is the floor of our concern, not the ceiling. And that is alarming enough.”

The report points to major gains in science, health, and education – alongside serious risks to information integrity, growing vulnerability, and increased abuse, especially against women, girls, journalists, and marginalized populations.

The two days were filled with speeches, many alternating state representatives with civil society voices. But “dialogue” – especially with those who hold power – seemed non-existent at this initial stage.

The Global Dialogue overlapped with the increasingly high-profile AI for Good Global Summit – a technology expo with staged areas for companies and organizations to showcase products and services or pitch problems that need solving. A sign of its growing popularity: for the first year it charged admission for most attendees, with a premium fee for the “Centre Stage” sessions.

Alongside impressive demonstrations of technology improving accessibility and scientific research, it was clear we remain captivated by humanoid robots – and that the allure of what we could do still overshadows what we should do. Its popularity and the claim of its organizers (International Telecommunications Union-ITU in partnership with other UN agencies, with the Swiss Government as co-convener) that it is “the United Nations’ leading platform on Artificial Intelligence” raises real questions about how it relates to – and where it is steering – the Global Dialogue.

The third event has had a longer, more inclusive history. The vision of the World Summit on the Information Society calls for a “people-centred, inclusive, and development-oriented Information Society,” and for over 20 years it has served as the primary multistakeholder forum for implementing communication and digital commitments. This is where community networks, human rights organizations, regulators, and private sector providers share sessions and plenaries – albeit alongside high-profile State sponsors.

No doubt because Geneva’s main conference centre, Palexpo, was fully booked by the Global Dialogue and AI for Good, the first two days of the 2026 WSIS Forum were held at ITU headquarters, down a construction-strewn road. The low-key setup – magnified by a confusing warren of hallways and meeting rooms – gave the impression that WSIS was the poor relation of digital governance.

The setting improved once the Forum moved to Palexpo for the rest of the week, but compared to the three halls buzzing with people (and robots) at AI for Good, the atmosphere stayed muted.

While the WSIS vision remains unfulfilled, it is still the platform that addresses the entire information society, including the digital environment. The Global Dialogue was full of speeches calling for meaningful community involvement, respect for human rights, equal access, and transparency; it is the WSIS Forum where actual efforts at community and multistakeholder cooperation are demonstrated as models for further action. It is far from a perfect, all-purpose governance and financing platform – but it is the most inclusive in focus and participation.

There is yet another significant platform coming up in a different time and place – the United Nations Internet Governance Forum – to be held in December in Nairobi, Kenya. Its 2026 theme is “Governing the Internet in the Age of Intelligence: Our Shared Responsibility.” Its mandate, linked to the WSIS process, is to bring diverse stakeholders together to shape digital public policy across both public and private sectors.

As the WACC delegation navigated these three meetings last week – and looks ahead to the IGF – we are left wondering where the most effective action on digital justice will actually happen.

Each forum has a role, and each needs WACC’s advocacy on equity, participation, and accountability. But the links between best practice, multistakeholder dialogue, public policy, and sustainable development have not yet been forged, and the still largely unregulated development of AI raises a hard question: which forum, or combination of forums, will have real impact?

Speaking at the WSIS Forum, Jennifer Chung, Chair of the IGF Multistakeholder Advisory Group, directly addressed the need for coordination, collaboration, and cohesion among these four platforms – essential to implementing the Global Digital Compact and to the power of multistakeholder cooperation.

Digital justice is needed more than ever, and WACC is committed to making sure the voices and experiences of those advocating for equity, participation, and accountability are heard loud and clear in every one of these forums. But that takes all of us.

Follow these processes. Read the reports. Speak up when your national delegation takes its seat at the Global Dialogue, raise questions about community involvement in the latest AI tech, and share our stories of how technological solutions work for all at WSIS and the IGF.

Most importantly, take action where you are. Digital justice is not only decided in Geneva or Nairobi – it is built in the communities where access, literacy, and safety are still out of reach.

Support your local community media. Champion digital literacy where you live. Push back against disinformation in your own networks. The forums will keep meeting. Whether they deliver justice depends on what we do between them.

Images: (clockwise from top) participants at WSIS, ITU/Pierre Albouy; speaker at the Global Governance on AI, ITU/Antoine Tardy; AI for Good Summit, ITU/D Woldu. All photos on ITU’s Flickr profile, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. 

However, for many people watching, including die-hard fans at WACC’s general secretariat, it will be hard to escape the feeling that something essential about the game may have been lost along the way.

At its heart, football is perhaps the most democratic game humanity has invented. All it requires is a ball, a patch of ground, and a few friends. It is played in the streets of Montevideo, on the beaches of Accra, in the narrow alleys of Naples, and on the dusty lots of Kathmandu. It is a game of neighbourhoods: children play on the corner, neighbours gather to watch and share a drink, and rivalries form between barrios.

In this sense, football fosters something precious: belonging, shared meaning, a local social fabric, and healthy competition. For Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, whose book El fútbol a sol y sombra (Soccer in Sun and Shadow) is one of football’s greatest chronicles, the essence of the game was playing for the pure joy of playing, the way a child plays with a balloon. He even dedicated his book to children he once met coming home from a match, singing that whether they won or lost, they had fun all the same.

But Galeano also told the other story of the sport. He showed how football became “a sad journey from pleasure to duty” as the game became an industry where profit became central.

This year’s World Cup illustrates this point like no other tournament so far. For the first time, FIFA has introduced dynamic pricing, and tickets for the final were reselling through FIFA’s own system for around USD10,000, with prices going for much higher through informal reselling markets.  The pricing practices provoked such outrage that the attorneys general of New York and New Jersey even opened a joint investigation into the matter.

Also, this year’s tournament will also be a tournament marked by immigration enforcement, with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) having arrested at least 167,000 people in and around the 11 US host cities between January 2025 and March 2026, and more than 120 civil rights organizations issuing a travel advisory warning that fans, players, and journalists could face serious rights violations during matches in the United States.

From WACC’s perspective, the story of football holds up a mirror to the power dynamics surrounding today’s communication ecosystem. The late Michael Traber, a Swiss communication and journalism scholar and WACC laureate, argued that communication is inscribed in human nature. For him, language is the shared house in which we live and communication a human need “as basic as food, clothing and shelter.”

Traber was convinced that without communication, there is no community. There is no talking to your neighbour, no knowing what is happening in your town, no coming together around common ideas, no acting collectively to meet shared concerns.

In this regard, communication, like street football, is how social fabric gets woven, how belonging and meaning are made at the most local and human level. And, like football, communication has been hijacked by a commercial, for-profit logic.

Media systems that should bring people together and act in the public interest are now designed to capture our attention and sell it to advertisers. Digital platforms and their obscure algorithms reward outrage and polarization instead of promoting social cohesion and belonging. Much of today’s media landscape does not help communities build shared meaning from the ground up. Rather, it replicates power dynamics and turns the most human of processes into a machine for selling.

For WACC, the parallel with football is clear. In both cases, something that belongs to everyone has been captured, commodified, and sold back to us, and in forms that no longer build community.

However, neither story has to end this way. In his writings, Galeano recalled several moments of resistance to the dominant profit-driven model, like the famous case of the Brazilian club Corinthians, led by the mythical footballer Sócrates, that was run democratically by its players in the early 1980s.

Communication has its equivalent examples of resistance, like the hundreds of community radio stations, feminist communication collectives, and digital rights groups that WACC has spent decades supporting, and whose work is pivotal for democracy and social justice.

These experiences prove that another logic is possible, one where communication organized around community rather than profit, participation rather than consumption, and dialogue rather than confrontation becomes the norm.

Therefore, while we at WACC will be watching the World Cup, we will also try to remember that football belongs to the street much like communication belongs to the community. Recovering this grassroots, neighbourhood-based, profoundly human understanding of communication is critical not only for democracy but also for building a life that is worth living where we can all flourish.

We hope you will join us in reclaiming communication – and football for that matter! – as a common good.

Top image: (left) Children playing soccer in northern Ethiopia. Photo by Ericjohnsonvik/CC BY-SA 4.0. (right) A member of the Pickwe Ikh Indigenous community in Colombia during training in communication and free technologies. The Common School, hosted by WACC partner PAKKIRU, equipped communities to document the environmental and social impact that mining and similar activities have on their territories. Photo by PAKKIRU.

The message that Africa’s role in artificial intelligence is an investment agenda reverberated across fireside chats, workshop presentations and exhibits at the recent “AI Everything Kenya” conference with the tagline “Home to the Most Innovative AI, Cybersecurity & Tech Showcases in Africa.” The event attracted the type of participants it was designed for: venture capitalists, government delegates, and technology innovators. Civil society actors were far fewer. Concerns about digital rights, inclusion, equality, and ethics were expressed only occasionally.

Numerous conversations regarding AI are taking place, but seemingly with little, if any, convergence across them. One constellation of discussions revolves around trade, innovation, and investment. Another debates digital justice and human rights on the internet. AI is applied for noble purposes as much as for nefarious ones. There are drones that map crop disease, small language models that cater to African communities, and generative AI trained on African publications. At the same time, AI is used in lethal autonomous weapons and for domestic mass surveillance.

AI Everything Kenya was a masterclass on the technical aspects of AI: how to prepare to raise a financing round, how to integrate AI into security strategies, how to build AI-ready use cases aligned with International Telecommunications Union (ITU) standards in various domains. With the exception of a handful of sessions, the conference lost an opportunity to grapple with issues of rights, opportunities, and freedoms. “What does it mean to safeguard our humanity?” Pope Leo asks in his recent encyclical letter, Magnifica Humanitas: “The risk extends beyond misuse. […] The quality of a civilization is measured not by the power of its means, but by the care it is able to offer, by its ability to recognize the other as a face not merely as a function […]. Technology can also support this mutual care between people, for example, by providing tools that help us anticipate and organize things, without undermining human freedom and judgment.”

In The Great Transformation, political economist Karl Polanyi argues that the idea of a market disembedded from society was a utopia and as such, could not exist without annihilating the human and natural substance of society. A protective counter movement would emerge to prevent disaster and create stability. Extending Polanyi’s critique of market fundamentalism to the AI revolution, it could be argued that the current over-enthusiasm about AI is bound to create an AI ecosystem that is disembedded from the social. Pockets of dissent rise, but the free market persists despite the problems it has brought on.

Likewise with the AI revolution, the momentum is at an all-time high and is likely to be amplified despite the concerns that have been raised, including displacement of human labour, environmental costs, algorithmic bias, and AI-enabled violence against women and girls. As long as the siloed conversations continue, with industry in its corner and conscientious civil society in another, the risks to society and community will continue into the distant future.

Image generated by WACC using Canva Magic Studio

Is it any wonder people are in thrall to the power and vicarious thrill of digital technologies when many acclaimed films and TV series extol the apparent virtues of digital surveillance. At the same time, they fear that State surveillance has gone too far.

A swift AI trawl of the Internet turns up TV series like The Capture (2019-2026): a British thriller series focusing on real-time deepfake technology, mass surveillance, and manipulated video evidence; Mr. Robot (2015-2019): a cyber-security engineer/vigilante hacker fights against corporate and state surveillance; Person of Interest (2011-2016): the “Machine” that monitors all electronic communication to predict crime; The Undeclared War (2022): a team of analysts in the UK’s GCHQ combat cyber warfare; Omniscient (2020): a Brazilian sci-fi series set in a city where citizens are monitored 24/7 by drones; Le Bureau des légendes: a French thriller centred on intelligence agents.

Films like The Great Hack (2019): exploring the Cambridge Analytica scandal and how personal data is used to shape behaviour; Enemy of the State (1998): a classic thriller about a man pursued using surveillance technology; Snowden (2016): a biographical film on the NSA whistleblower; Anon (2018): set in a world where privacy no longer exists; The Circle (2017): an attempt to create a utopian society through total surveillance.

Such productions celebrate the magic of the technology as much as a thrilling – if unlikely – storyline. They take place at one remove from reality, on the screen, in a dystopian world. There are heroes and villains and a sense that “it couldn’t happen here”. And yet surveillance – physical, electronic, computer, social media, corporate, biometric – is present in daily life and regularly abused. And it’s not just the Chinese.

An article on the US data broker industry in The Guardian (21 March 2026) said, “through contracting a network of data brokers that amass information from apps, web browsers and other online sources, federal authorities have been able to access information that it would otherwise need a warrant to obtain. Buying such information, usually en masse, can circumvent this requirement, leading many privacy advocates to label the practice unconstitutional.” Throw in Artificial Intelligence and this mass of data can provide a detailed and fairly comprehensive picture of any person’s life.

In April 2026, the US Congress temporarily extended the controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) with its amendment dating back to 2008 that allows federal intelligence agencies to collect data on foreigners, including their contacts with US citizens. It would be naïve to think that the current US administration would allow the concept of democratic accountability to prevent such data harvesting. And that goes for China, Russia, North Korea, Myanmar and many others.

A new article in Computer Law & Security Review (July 2026) titled Why states are failing to rein in the spyware market noted that worldwide demand for spyware continues to grow, and “how states continue to drive the commercial proliferation of spyware through a market in which they are the primary buyers.” The author concludes that in the face of current geopolitical upheavals, “those seeking to constrain commercial spyware proliferation and its negative externalities may ultimately need to rely on a fourth option: the power of independent oversight bodies and institutions like courts to check spyware trade and misuse.”

Ten years ago, the artist and geographer Trevor Paglen, renowned for his photographs, films, installations, and books on the theme of surveillance, engaged in a conversation with long-time collaborator, computer-security expert, activist, and hacker Jacob Appelbaum, published in BOMB Magazine (22 March 2016). Paglen began by saying:

“The Internet was supposed to be the greatest tool of global communications and means of sharing knowledge in human history. And it is. But it has also become the most effective instrument of mass surveillance and potentially one of the greatest instruments of totalitarianism in the history of the world.”

Ten years later, surveillance is so taken for granted that films and TV series are making a virtue out of it, governments are blatantly misusing it, and people are ignoring the dangers. Or are they? A recent symposium held in Berlin underlined the need for greater public oversight of digital rights and AI accountability. It set out an action plan for advocacy in international and national spaces, critical thinking through existing and new educational resources, and cross-sectoral networking to share information, knowledge, and financing.

So who knows if the next Netflix hit won’t be the one where civil society fights back to reclaim digital technology to build a fairer, safer, and more inclusive world? Anyone seen From Meta With Love?

Poster: Saskia Rowley + Shutterstock

As highlighted in a recent statement by WACC North America, on March 14, Brendan Carr, Chair of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) wrote a social media post on X, in response to President Trump’s complaint that media outlets were reporting negatively on his war efforts in Iran that, “broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions – also known as the fake news – have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up.”

He further threatened that broadcasters are in danger of having their licenses revoked if they do not operate in the public interest, saying, “the law is clear.”

The WACC North America statement is strong and clear in defending the rights guaranteed in the First Amendment, and in the public interest of the media’s coverage of the war, stating: “A government that cannot be scrutinized in this way is neither of the people, nor for the people.”

The statement also notes that WACC has long documented the erosion of media freedom in authoritarian states and fragile democracies across the world. The tactics are numbingly familiar: regulatory pressure, licence threats, the weaponisation of “fake news” as a label to delegitimise unflattering coverage. What is new – and urgently alarming – is that these same tactics are now being deployed in Washington DC.

Media freedom is not a regional concern. It is the connective tissue of democratic life everywhere. When one nation normalises the use of regulatory bodies to intimidate journalists, it hands a playbook to governments around the world that were already looking for permission to do the same.

The United States has historically used its global influence to pressure other nations toward press freedom. If that influence is now exercised in the opposite direction, the consequences will be felt far beyond American borders.

The call from WACC-NA to affirm and protect constitutional press freedoms is not partisan – it is foundational. Across the political spectrum, across faiths and traditions, a free and independent press is one of the few institutions that serves everyone. The moment it becomes an instrument of state approval, it serves no one.

This is the moment for voices everywhere – faith communities, civil society, international bodies – to speak clearly.

The freedom of the press is under active, escalating threat. It demands an urgent, unified, and global response. Be vigilant wherever you are. Speak Out. Resist authoritarian pressures to censor the press. Defend and support media freedom in every way you can. 

Photo: Loredana Sangiuliano/Shutterstock

Reuters recently reported that US diplomats worldwide have been ordered to track and counter data localization efforts, naming the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as an example of “unnecessarily burdensome” regulation.

According to Reuters, “Experts say the move signals the Trump administration is reverting to a more confrontational approach as some foreign countries seek limits around how Silicon Valley firms process and store their citizens’ personal information – initiatives often described as ‘data sovereignty’ or ‘data localization’.”

This is not the first time – nor is it likely to be the last – that the current US Administration tries to control or block legislation aimed at protecting people’s fundamental rights and freedoms in relation to communication, data, and Artificial Intelligence applications.

At last year’s Internet Governance Forum, Jennifer Bachus, Acting Head of the Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy at the U.S. Department of State, openly asserted that American technology companies should not be subject to regulation by foreign governments: “The United States is troubled by reports that some foreign governments, including here in Europe, are using policies that could tighten the screws on U.S. top companies with international footprints, and we will not accept that, and we think it’s a terrible mistake.”

The unregulated collection of data is inextricably linked on the one hand to its economic benefit – the huge profit margins of mega-corporations – and on the other hand to government surveillance. The security services and the military need the data provided by surveillance to track and in certain cases to eliminate dissent.

Governments insisting on no regulation are hiding behind economic laissez-faire policies to conceal data gathering and its use by their security services and military. Surveillance itself is camouflaged as (inter)national security to facilitate the tracking and location of terrorists and even their assassination – as, recently, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Government and corporate interests are in cahoots. For example, as reported in The Guardian, “OpenAI helped launch a $125m lobbying initiative, a Super Pac, to make sure no state can regulate AI. It’s attacking any politician who tries to pass safety laws. It wants Trump, and only Trump, to write the rules for the most powerful technology on earth. Every month, subscription money from users around the world flows to a company that is embedding itself in the repressive infrastructure of the Trump administration.”

Data sovereignty is crucial. It makes data subject to the laws and governance of the country in which it is stored and transmitted. The world’s largest cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, operate under US laws. Yet the pretext of avoiding “unnecessarily burdensome regulation” means that the US government is guaranteeing access in a bid to advance its own economic and security agendas.

Today, state-sponsored cyber threats are escalating, with attacks targeting critical infrastructure, government agencies, and private enterprises. Increasingly, such attacks are facilitated by Artificial Intelligence, which can be used to help thwart them. However, it’s a merry-go-round as AI tries to stay one step ahead and at which quantum computers (most of whose developers are based in North America) are going to be much more adept.

The US call for non-regulation masks its intention to own and control personal and corporate data assets. As a key dimension of today’s communication rights, data sovereignty must be robustly protected. Digital justice demands no less.

Photo: Gangis Khan/iStock

This sharp critique, delivered at the World Governments Summit in Dubai on 4 February, reflects growing global concern about the unchecked power of technology giants and the impact of their digital platforms on the mental health of children and youth.

During his intervention in Dubai, Sanchez also announced that Spain is planning to ban social media access for minors under the age of 16, becoming the first European country to implement such a measure.

The proposed legislation, which will be introduced as an amendment to an existing bill on digital protection for minors currently being reviewed by Spain’s parliament, requires platforms to implement “effective age verification systems – not just checkboxes, but real barriers that work.” Spain’s package of measures also includes holding platform executives criminally liable for failing to remove illegal or hateful content, sanctioning those who amplify harmful content, and tracking how platforms fuel division.

There is plenty of evidence supporting this type of regulatory action. In the United States, the country’s Surgeon General’s Advisory on Social Media and Youth Mental Health has warned that “we cannot conclude social media is sufficiently safe for children and adolescents.”

This is based on research that shows that adolescents spending more than three hours daily on social media face double the risk of experiencing mental health disorders. Excessive use has also been linked to sleep problems, attention difficulties, cyberbullying, and body image issues.

Spain joins a growing number of countries moving in this direction. Australia became the world’s first country to implement such a ban, in December 2025. France recently approved a bill restricting access to these platforms for people under 15. Denmark, the United Kingdom, and Greece are considering similar measures, which may eventually lead to similar pan-European regulations.

The response from tech executives to Spain’s announcement has been quite aggressive.

Elon Musk, owner of X, responded to Sánchez’s announcement by calling him a “true fascist totalitarian.” Telegram founder Pavel Durov accused Spain’s government of “pushing dangerous new regulations that threaten your internet freedoms” and claimed the measures would turn Spain “into a surveillance state under the guise of ‘protection.’”

Such rhetoric equates democratic regulation with authoritarianism and calls the commitment of these companies to their user’s wellbeing into question.

While the details of Spain’s regulation are still being finalized, WACC sees the country’s proposed actions as a positive development. Such regulations reassert the legitimate role of democratic states in reining in the power of Big Tech in ways that prioritize the public good over private profit.

For too long, technology companies have operated with minimal oversight, designing platforms optimized for engagement and advertising revenue rather than user wellbeing. The Spanish government’s willingness to establish clear boundaries and to hold companies accountable represents a necessary rebalancing of democratic governance and corporate power.

We also believe that Spain’s initiative sparks a broader conversation about the impact of social media on people’s mental health. This needs to become a society-wide conversation that centers the public interest and public health over private profits, especially as AI creates new capabilities to amplify harmful content.

WACC also hopes that Spain’s efforts will go beyond prohibition to include initiatives promoting critical media literacy among youth.

As education researcher Paula Marcelo has noted, “The success of the proposal won’t be in preventing a young person from touching a phone until they turn 16, but in accompanying and supporting families to educate children in healthy and critical use of social media.”

While bans can be helpful, young people also need to be equipped with the skills to navigate digital environments critically, to recognize manipulation and disinformation, and to participate as active citizens in democratic life.

WACC has long promoted such critical media literacy approaches, most notably through our work with partner organization Helping Hand in Georgia. In 2021, WACC supported projects empowering disadvantaged youth from secondary schools and universities to develop digital skills that address social challenges and harmful behaviour.

A subsequent project trained young people as digital citizenship ambassadors, equipping them with tools to navigate the digital world safely and promote responsible online behavior among their peers. As Helping Hand’s Executive Director observed, young people “should not be considered just an affected population, but also as highly effective partners in the efforts to fight disinformation and misinformation.”

From our perspective, the Helping Hand experience in Georgia shows that media literacy initiatives can empower young people not merely to protect themselves from harm, but to become active defenders of communication rights. We believe that Spain’s regulatory framework would be significantly strengthened by incorporating similar approaches that foster civic engagement and active citizenship.

For WACC, the question is not whether to regulate tech platforms, but how to do so in ways that protect the vulnerable, prioritize genuine human connection and social trust, and strengthen democracy. Spain has taken an important step in this direction. Let us hope other countries and relevant stakeholders follow suit.

Editorial illustration generated using AI to accompany commentary on social media regulation.

Recent headlines I read run from the latest attempts by Donald Trump to own Greenland to Taylor Swift becoming the second–youngest ever inductee to the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

There doesn’t seem to be a connection, but there is – digital technology.

Whether it’s the semi-conductors and modern military planes that need critical minerals or the algorithms in streaming services that can magnify popularity, the influence of digital technology permeates all aspects of our life far beyond what most people realise.

This was the topic of WACC Europe’s most recent online discussion, led by network member and AI expert Erin Green. The event highlighted just how important WACC’s resources on digital justice are to raise awareness of informed use and identify issues requiring advocacy.

But the discussion also raised the question of what would happen if journalists themselves took a digital justice lens to the news stories they are reporting and highlighted this red thread running through them.

So often, the development and use of digital technology come under the “Tech” section of the news.  Here, even if you are reading the section religiously, you can easily miss the enormity of digital’s impact.

The Greenland saga is not only about mineral extraction but surveillance technology. It is also connected to the vital importance that tech spending on AI developments has for US economic growth – adding to the U.S. government’s insistence on unregulated development even over safety concerns.

A salacious story of Prince Harry taking Associated Newspapers to court may garner little sympathy for the combatants, but it should remind us of all the digital tools that make it possible now to listen in, scrape data, and track movements of even the least of us.

Water scarcity? It’s a climate change story or a private industry scandal and, increasingly, an artificial intelligence dilemma. Will AI identify environmental solutions before the massive data centres being built to increase its power further drain communities dry?

More apparent digital connections can be seen in other stories, from local impact – an AI-generated image of a damaged railway bridge in northern England posted on social media that caused rail companies to cancel trains – to international horror when Internet shutdowns hide violent repression.

There is of course other news related to digital technology that is positive, from health breakthroughs to exposure of human rights abuse that leads to justice. But digital justice issues are the red thread running through our news and lives – making this the common focal point for informed use and advocacy.

Communication rights campaigners know much of this already. The danger is that we think this is obvious to everyone else.

This is why we need to make sure people take the first step and learn about the connected, deeper issues of our digital lives. Part of the value of WACC’s Just Digital course is that it does exactly that – it highlights the many justice issues linked to the digital ecosystem driving our world today.

Let’s ensure that the red threads of digital justice are visible in our families, schools, workplaces, community organizations, media, and more. When realities are exposed, steps towards justice can finally take place.

Photos: Hadrian/Shutterstock, Toeizuza Thailand/Shutterstock, Tada Images/Shutterstock

Photo: Digital justice, Just Digital, WACC Europe, digital technologies, media