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.

Image: nutbun/shutterstock

Memorial has joined a growing list of investigative news outlets, journalists, and rights organisations classed as being an agent of foreign powers. Many believe the move is politically motivated.

A term with Soviet-era undertones, the status of “foreign agent” forces individuals or organizations to disclose sources of funding and to label all their publications, including social media posts, with a tag – or face fines.

Dissidents, including Nobel Prize-winning physicist Andrei Sakharov, established Memorial in the late 1980s with the aim of countering the possible return of totalitarianism by shaping public awareness of the values of democracy and the rule of law; by restoring historical truth; and by perpetuating the memory of victims of political repression.

The notion of a right to memory falls under the umbrella of communication rights: those that enable people and communities to survive and to secure their lives through freedom of opinion and expression and by availing themselves of media and all forms of communication.

In this regard, wherever a policy of enforced amnesia reigns, it falls to civil society to be the true guardians of public memory.

Memorial has noted that the number of political prisoners in Russia has risen sharply in recent years in a trend that recalls Soviet-era repression. It cited at least 420 political prisoners (compared to 46 in 2015), including Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who in 2020 survived a poisoning attempt with a Novichok nerve agent.

In response to the attack on Memorial, Amnesty International (12 November 2021) wrote:

“The Russian authorities’ move to extinguish one of the oldest and most influential human rights groups in the country demonstrates their relentless determination to end all ongoing human rights work in Russia. By targeting Memorial and its mission to preserve the memory of victims of human rights violations during the Soviet era, the authorities believe they can simply erase the state’s past crimes against its own people from the history books forever.”

In the opinion of French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, “It is along the path of critical history that memory encounters the sense of justice.” He meant that an open and truthful view of history is vital if governments and societies are to maintain and enjoy peace and progress.

Putin is steadily reversing the gains of post-1989 perestroika and glasnost. How long before another Russian Revolution?

Photo above: Logo of Memorial, an international human rights organisation founded in Russia. It was the country’s oldest human rights group.

It has led to wholesale urgent calls to assist Afghans – particularly women, journalists, and those who have worked for or aided humanitarian aid organisations and military – to flee the country or to be protected if they choose to remain. See for instance, Global Alliance on Media and Gender’s urgent call on the United Nations take urgent action to protect women journalists seeking to leave or remain in Afghanistan

The crisis also lays bare the digital media conundrum – is it a human rights blessing or curse?

In his recent opinion piece for The New York Times, Thomas Friedman, says there is hope that through digital communication, the Taliban can be held to account:

“When the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, iPhones, Facebook and Twitter didn’t even exist. Flash forward to today: Afghanistan is not only much more connected to the world, but it’s connected internally as well. It will not be nearly as easy for the Taliban to hide their abuses from the world or from fellow Afghans.

In 2001, virtually no one in Afghanistan owned a mobile phone. Today, more than 70 percent of Afghans do, and many of them have internet-enabled smartphones. While there is nothing inherently liberalizing about owning a phone, according to a 2017 study by Internews, Afghanistan’s social media ‘is already propagating change as it has become a platform for denouncing cases of corruption and injustice, bringing attention to causes that have not yet been addressed on traditional media and seemingly letting any social media user voice a public opinion.’

Maybe the Taliban will just shut it all down. And maybe they won’t be able to.”

But there is also evidence that the Taliban is already using digital accounts and the data held by government and NGOs to track down those they consider “collaborators”, and guides to help individuals delete their digital history and increase the security of their devices is also being shared [[]]

The future of Afghanistan is grim, but in the words of Malala:

“We will have time to debate what went wrong in the war in Afghanistan, but in this critical moment we must listen to the voices of Afghan women and girls. They are asking for protection, for education, for the freedom and the future they were promised. We cannot continue to fail them.”

We cannot let the abuses of any government or powerful group stay in the shadows. This is the essence of our communication rights – and our responsibility.

Photo: Ottawa, Canada. August 14th, 2021. End War in Afghanistan protest from local diaspora, asking the West to stand up to the Taliban. Image: Meandering Images/Shutterstock

Protests of this kind are an effective communication strategy for challenging political, social, and developmental injustices. As Elie Wiesel famously said, “There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”

Collective memory encompasses both products (e.g. books and statues) and practices (e.g. commemoration and denial). For some, this is a matter of heritage, patrimony, and national identity. For others, it becomes manipulation, cultural invasion, and oppression.

Many countries have actively responded to claims of systemic injustice. Post-apartheid South Africa was one of the first to set up a truth and reconciliation commission, followed by several post-dictatorship countries, notably in Latin America. Both Canada and Australia are still working on reconciliation with their indigenous peoples. Such actions – public acknowledgement of crimes, transitional justice, and reparations – help build greater awareness of the issues at stake.

Contentious as they are, renaming streets, removing statues, repatriating museum holdings are to a certain extent cosmetic unless deeper problems are addressed. Racism, patriarchy, and misogyny embedded in social and cultural systems and structures – including language – have all shaped collective memory and attitudes.

It is heartening, therefore, when an international official speaks up publicly to condemn injustice and when public service media report the story in full. In July 2021, Valentin Inzko, the outgoing head of Bosnia’s Office of the High Representative (OHR) outlawed denial of genocide in Bosnia to counter attempts by the country’s Serbs to deny the scope of the 1995 massacre in Srebrenica – Europe’s only post-1945 genocide.

The OHR is the international body overseeing implementation of the peace agreement that ended the 1992-95 war in Bosnia. It has the authority to impose decisions or dismiss officials who undermine reconciliation efforts among the country’s different ethnic groups, especially its Bosniaks, who are predominantly Muslim.

As reported in The Guardian newspaper, Inzko decided to use his powers after Bosnia’s politicians failed to act, citing in particular a refusal by the Bosnian Serb assembly to withdraw decorations awarded to three convicted war criminals, including the country’s former wartime leader Radovan Karadžić, later convicted of genocide and sentenced to life imprisonment.

In response to Inzko’s action, Bosnian Serb politicians began boycotting Bosnia’s multi-ethnic state institutions, effectively preventing them from functioning.

Even so, we see that public communication of protest, criticism, and ways of affirming human dignity can play a vital part in restoring a sense of justice to history.

Image: The fallen Christopher Columbus statue outside the Minnesota State Capitol after a group led by American Indian Movement members tore it down in St. Paul, Minnesota, on June 10, 2020. Photo: Tony Webster/Wikimedia Commons