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. 

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

I seem to spend a lot of my working days reading, writing, and speaking about the harms and risks of our increasing digitalization, especially artificial intelligence.

Granted, this all gets channelled into plans and actions to address harms and strengthen benefits: what individuals, institutions, networks can do to make an impact towards a rights-based communication and information ecosystem.

But there always seems to be another piece of “bad news,” such as the latest reports on the increasing electricity usage of data centres or the projection of Meta’s and other companies’ “smart glasses” – already known for recording women without consent –becoming the next viral tech product.

It’s like trying to walk up a sand dune. Progress is so slow when the ground keeps shifting underneath you.

Then, earlier this week, I had the opportunity of interviewing several young people for a summer job with WACC. One of our questions was, “How would you define digital justice?” We just wanted to know if they understood the concept.

But they not only understood it; they expressed it more clearly than I could. “Giving rights to everyone, so everyone benefits,” said one. “Making what we have now, into what it was meant to be,” said another.

Simple words of “good news” that are helping me to reassess my approach – to centre our advocacy on what we are for, not just what we are against.

In this, so many of our community partners have inspiring stories not just on providing and strengthening solutions to local needs but also demonstrating a new paradigm of “meaningful connectivity.”

In his article for the latest issue of WACC’s journal, Media Development, Gustaff Iskandar from our partner organisation Common Room describes how the Kasepuhan Ciptagelar Indigenous community in the Highlands of West Java, Indonesia, assembled partners and knowledge to build a technical infrastructure and manage an income-generating communication network based on their traditional values in this rural and remote region.

As Iskandar writes, “It demonstrates that the most effective way to connect the unconnected is to empower them to connect themselves.”

From webinars to informal discussions, I hear the good news of increasing calls and small but practical steps to move away from the platforms and devices of the Big Tech companies. Putting a high priority on data protection, environmental sustainability, and fair labour practices widens one’s choice for collaboration platforms, video conferencing, text editing, and more.

Media reports from the US to Australia are documenting significant resistance from communities to development plans for huge data centres, whose energy and water use, noise, and impact on natural areas are becoming more apparent.

People invested in their own communities are pushing back at processes and planning decisions that are not transparent or consultative, not to mention significantly negative for the well-being of the local community.    

Following WACC’s symposium in April, “Our Common Future: Advocating Digital Rights and AI Accountability,” organized with ecumenical partners, there has been increased attention on action towards AI accountability particularly from church and ecumenical partners – a powerful network to advocate for a rights-based digital future.

One result was a joint submission by the World Council of Churches and the Future of Life Institute to the first United Nations Global Dialogue on AI Governance. The submission highlights priorities for urgent action including safe, secure, and trustworthy AI; coordination of AI governance approaches; protection and promotion of human rights; transparency, accountability, and human oversight; and equitable distribution of AI’s economic benefits.

WACC also joined a submission from the Global Digital Rights Coalition (GDRC) to the Global Dialogue setting out our call for a rights-based, inclusive dialogue and decision-making process.

All these steps are part of a bigger movement, to “give rights to everyone, so everyone benefits,” and to “make what we have now, into what it was meant to be.” 

May we all nourish that positive vision – the good news to drive us into the common digital justice future we want to see.

Photo: Laszlo Mates/Shutterstock

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

On 25 March 2026, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and Google negligent for designing social media platforms that harmed a young user through addictive features, awarding $6 million in damages. Just one day earlier, a New Mexico jury had ordered Meta to pay $375 million for misleading consumers about platform safety and enabling child exploitation.

These verdicts, the first of their kind, signal that public perception of social media giants is shifting. For years, these companies operated with little oversight and were shielded by a cultural narrative that saw them as neutral utilities and as important actors for democratic communication.

However, that narrative is unraveling. As one of the plaintiff’s legal counsels said after the Los Angeles verdict, “accountability has arrived.”

Yet the legal verdicts shed light on something more fundamental than corporate negligence in individual cases. They expose the structural logic of an industry whose profits depend on capturing and monetizing human attention.

Harvard scholar Shoshana Zuboff described the situation a few years ago as “surveillance capitalism,” which can be understood as a dominant business model in which platforms collect behavioral data, develop predictions, and optimize systems to influence behavior in ways that generate profit for advertisers. The longer users remain engaged, the more advertisements they see, and the more valuable they become to advertisers.

Internal documents revealed during the trial showed that Meta executives knew that children with “adverse effects” were most likely to become addicted to content on their platforms, yet the company pursued strategies to attract young users because it is a valuable demographic from a revenue generation perspective.  

In other words, the problem is not merely that harmful content reaches children. It is that the entire architecture of these platforms, which include features such infinite scroll, autoplay, algorithmic recommendations, and push notifications, is engineered to maximize time on site because attention is the commodity being sold.

Now, if we know that the business model behind these platforms is not only ethically questionable because of their effort to capture our attention at all costs but also harmful to vulnerable members of society, can we think of different financial models that allow for a different type of digital ecosystem?

For example, the Club of Rome’s Earth for All report proposes treating data and knowledge as commons, much like minerals or the atmosphere, and establishing “citizen funds” that charge corporations for extracting these shared resources and redistribute the revenue to citizens.

Other proposals, from global governance entities like the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, include digital solidarity contributions modeled on climate finance mechanisms, debt-for-digital-rights swaps for low-income countries to help bridge the digital divide, and ethical investment models grounded in human rights framework.

These models would fundamentally reorder the relationship between platforms and the public, transforming users from raw material into stakeholders with claims on the value their participation in the digital ecosystem generates. And while none of these approaches are sufficient alone, and it’s unclear if there is enough political will to transform them into policy, they show that alternatives to the current extractive model are possible and urgent.

In this context, civil society currently has a rare opportunity to shape the logic of future financial models for digital technology. The 20-year review of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS+20) and the implementation of the 2024 UN’s Global Digital Compact resulted in mandates for states and UN bodies like the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the United Nations Group on the Information Society (UNGIS) to assess global financing gaps.

This is a technical process that, as climate governance has shown, can decisively shape later political negotiations. These processes, while appearing abstract and bureaucratic, are key spaces where some of the rules of the digital future will be written.

WACC and its allies and partners around the world continue to engage strategically in these forums, contributing evidence, proposing alternative models, and inviting grassroots and voices from the global South to the table.

The Meta and Google verdicts have demonstrated that the attention economy can be challenged. The question now is whether we can build something better in its place: a digital future based not in extraction and addiction but in participation, equity, and the common good.

Photo: Phatsuke/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

The plot could easily have been from a Netflix dystopian thriller.

“The Russian Guy” approaches ordinary women and girls leading ordinary lives, one walking her child to school, another stocking supermarket shelves, and a young girl walking by.

“Hello. What’s your name? You look beautiful. Come with me.”

He has sex with them in his rental apartment. The entire encounter is captured on video through his Ray-Ban META smart glasses. He posts the videos on his private Telegram account and porn sites for paying followers, while shorter clips have gone viral on TikTok and Instagram. Rumors swirl that he is HIV positive. Evidence indicates that hundreds of women and young girls across Kenya, Ghana, and South Africa have fallen prey.

The spectrum of technology-facilitated gender-based violence has fanned out yet again into an even more grotesque form.

First, it was humans operating in the dark web. As the range of tech tools expanded, so did new ideas emerge on how to amplify violations against women and girls. Grok, the AI chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, enabled image-editing to create non-consensual sexualized images of women. With “the Russian Guy,” otherwise known as “Yaytseslav,” AI-powered wearables in the form of eyewear with hidden cameras have raised the stakes. His prey were unaware that the blinking light at the corner of the frames was a recording camera paired to a smartphone.

The gender AI divide – inequalities between women and men related to access, use, development, and representation in AI technologies – one that is wider for less tech-savvy women, implies that the room for AI-amplified violations can only expand.

Yaytseslav’s case is also a cautionary tale on AI ethics and regulation. Despite public outrage in Ghana and Kenya and calls for his arrest, he remains active, posting content on social media.

The Cyber Security Authority in Ghana invoked Section 67 of the Cybersecurity Act, which criminalizes the non-consensual recording, publication, or distribution of intimate images or videos. By then, he had travelled to Kenya, where the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act 2018 provides similar grounds.

Legislation is of little value, however, when perpetrators can move freely between jurisdictions. The scale of Yaytseslav’s actions might have been reduced if comprehensive, regional and/or international AI regulatory frameworks had been in place to serve as a deterrent.

That the events are presently unfolding in the Silicon Savannah in Kenya, a country that is one of Africa’s frontier tech nations and one of the region’s top AI policymakers, is alarming.

Regulation must cover AI-amplified gendered violence, exclusion, exploitation and misogyny, beyond the often-touted economic benefits. Rather than a patchwork of dispersed national laws, standards must be harmonized across the region. They must be enforced by a powerful regulator able to stand up to the Global North’s big tech firms on all facets of technology.

Photo: Ground Pictures and People Images composition

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