Alternatively, Web3 may be what everyone is waiting for. It’s about giving users more control over their Internet activity and data.

At present, people interact with the web and generate data that companies use for marketing and for creating new money-making platforms. Companies also sell the data to third parties. Consequently, people have little say over where their data goes and how it is used. To be honest, many don’t care and are seemingly happy to leave matters there.

Fans of Web3 technology say it will offer a new, decentralized phase of the web run by ordinary people and communities instead of global entities like Facebook and Google. But as the concept has gained ground, the tech giants have been taking note and they want in. Meta, owner of Instagram and Facebook, has filed multiple trademark applications for Web3 software. Spotify is seeking Web3 experts. Microsoft is backing Web3-based start-ups. Many ordinary people are wary of this influx of Big Tech money, seeing it as a way of hijacking the Web3 dream.

The Web3 Foundation believes in an internet where users own their own data, not corporations; global digital transactions are secure; and online exchanges of information and value are decentralized.

Web3 stores information in virtual digital wallets. Individuals use these wallets to tap into Web3 applications, which are run on blockchain technology. When a user wants to disconnect from an application, they simply log off, disconnect their wallet and take their data with them.

Web3 is built using decentralized blockchains – the shared ledger systems used by cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ether. For this reason, some critics think it is little more than a rebranding effort for crypto or a dystopian vision of a pay-to-play Internet, in which every activity and social interaction remains a financial opportunity.

In a keynote speech at Stanford University (21 April 2022), former President Barack Obama criticised today’s tech landscape. “One of the biggest reasons for the weakening of democracy is the profound change that’s taken place in how we communicate and consume information,” he said. “Do we allow our democracy to wither, or do we make it better? That is the choice.”

Web3 may be the current future of the Internet. But even community platforms will have to confront the same tensions between public and private, free speech and hate speech – even if the scales of power and ownership are being tilted back toward creators and users. Whatever version comes next, the democratic values of liberty, equality, and justice, with independent public institutions balanced by an active and informed civil society, remain paramount.

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What is it? A series of extensive gender and media monitoring studies conducted every five years since 1995 by WACC Global, an international NGO that advocates communication rights in order to achieve social justice.

By analysing gender differences in the portrayal and representation of women and men in print, broadcast, online, and social media news, the GMMP puts a spotlight on gender inequalities perpetuated in and through the news media.

Preliminary results of the GMMP 2020 research are expected early next year. However, past monitoring results have shown extremely slow progress in bringing women’s voices to the foreground of public discourse taking place in traditional and digital media.

GMMP research show a male-centric view of the world in the news. Stories reveal gender bias and extensive stereotyping that perpetuate marginalization, discrimination, and violence against women and girls.

Of course, there have also been positive examples of better gender balance as well as genuine change in media house policies and journalism training practices.

Many social and cultural factors underlie gender injustice, which has been around forever. A recent BBC travel story titled “Nüshu: China’s secret female-only language” (published on its web site 1 October 2020) describes how “Throughout history, women in rural Hunan Province used a coded script to express their most intimate thoughts to one another.”

Why? “Historically, it was not socially acceptable for Chinese women to talk openly about their problems. Nüshu provided an outlet for the women and helped to create a bond of female friendship and support that was of great importance in a male-dominated society.”

Much of what we know about Nüshu today is due to the work of male researcher Zhou Shuoyi. During China’s Cultural Revolution under Mao Zedong, attempts were made to eradicate the legacy of its feudal past, including Nüshu. In addition, women abandoned it as they became more literate.

In 1979, Zhou Shuoyi was allowed to continue his studies, translating the Nüshu script into Chinese and finally publishing a dictionary together with the last surviving fluent native “speaker”. Zhou, who died in 2004, remains the only male to have mastered the female-only script.

Today, there is no excuse for the suppression of women’s voices in public or private communication. The GMMP provides first-hand evidence of the ongoing need for both men and women to continue the long struggle for gender equality.

Photo above: Volunteers from Papua New Guinea take part in monitoring day September 29 for the 2020 Global Media Monitoring Project.