Digital Freedom Fund

This week we celebrate 7 years of supporting strategic litigation on digital rights! 🎉  Here are some of our highlights:   💪 We’ve awarded over 110 grants, supporting strategic litigation to tackle issues like racist predictive policing, algorithmic discrimination, and online harm. Read more about our latest grants here: https://lnkd.in/ecKwBwrA 🤝 Our events have brought together hundreds of activists & organisations from around Europe and beyond, creating spaces to build intersectional coalitions, strategise, and reflect. Read about our latest strategic litigation retreat: https://lnkd.in/eZYbJ2Pk 🌍 We worked with European Digital Rights and over 30 participants to design a decolonising programme for the digital rights field. This transformative work is now evolving into its own entity, Weaving Liberation. Discover more: https://lnkd.in/e9xphJrZ 🗣️ We hosted a series of thought-provoking speaker sessions on key topics and crucial perspectives on digital rights. Our latest Speaker Series dives into lessons on collective redress from across the globe. Watch here: https://lnkd.in/eiwCKfX4 🌟 We've aligned our internal practices with our values by co-designing a decentralised organisational structure, co-creating a new salary model, and moving to a 4-day work week. More on this journey: https://lnkd.in/ejnRgKcQ    🎉 Here's to many more years of defending and advancing digital rights and working towards racial, social, economic, and environmental justice!

Our Co-Director, Nikita Kekana, and Legal Officer, César Manso-Sayao, recently facilitated three impactful sessions at the SHARE Fondacija Digital Rights Summer School in Montenegro on strategic litigation and tactics for supporting digital rights! 🌟 Thanks to our co-facilitators Evelyn Austin from Bits of Freedom and Hans de Swart from the Racism & Technology Center for the collaboration and our two grantees Duje Prkut from Politiscope and Danilo Curcic from A 11 - Initiative for Economic and Social Rights for showcasing their digital rights legal cases.

📅 On 4-5 September, DFF will host a Collective Action for Platform Accountability Workshop in Berlin. The workshop will explore different funding models and strategies for negotiating with third-party funders. 📝 We'll also cover important topics like scope, standing, and admissibility of claims, how to make the most of legal frameworks like the GDPR and the DSA, and some of the practical and administrative aspects involved in managing collective redress litigation projects. 🔍 If you are working on collective redress in the digital rights space and would like to learn more about the outcomes of the workshop, or would like to attend a follow-up event we are planning to host next November, do not hesitate to reach out to us at projects@digitalfreedomfund.org. We’d love to hear from you! ➡️ Read our newest blog post reflecting on our collective redress events: https://lnkd.in/eMa4J4-y 🖼 Artwork by: Kruthika N. S.

🎉 Big news at DFF: We’re shifting to a new distributed leadership model! We have recognised the importance of aligning our internal operations with our core values of social, racial, economic, and feminist justice. Our new leadership model and other significant changes like a permanent four-day workweek and a transparent salary structure bring us closer to creating a fairer and more just workplace. After months of working together, we are happy to share that we now have four layers, each representing a type of function at DFF: ✅ Programmatic layer ✅ Operational support layer ✅ Coordination layer ✅ Leadership layer This change is a big step forward in creating a workplace that’s fairer, more transparent, and more in tune with the values we fight for every day. By moving away from a pyramid structure to a model where decision-making lies with those closest to the work, we are fostering a culture of collaboration, care, and personal growth. We’re incredibly grateful to our working group: Adelaide Hirwe, Jihane Jadrane, Laurence Meyer, Thomas Vink, and everyone who contributed to co-creating this model. A special thanks to Gitanjali Wolf for guiding us through this process. As we continue to refine and improve our model, we welcome dialogue with others interested in exploring alternative power-sharing models. Stay tuned for more updates on our journey! 👉🏿 Read the full blog here: https://lnkd.in/ejnRgKcQ 🖼 Artwork by Kruthika N. S.

🌍 Looking back on our recent Strategic Litigation Retreat, we're still filled with inspiration and excitement! We spent three days tucked away in the German Alps with 15 amazing participants from across Europe, each working on a unique case related to platform accountability or collective redress. The dedication and creativity we saw in tackling issues like digital gender justice, online hate speech, and taking on big tech was nothing short of incredible. We made sure to relax and connect, whether it was hiking to take in the view of Germany’s tallest mountain, swimming in a nearby lake, or just roasting marshmallows by the bonfire. Check out the full blog post to dive deeper into what we worked on. 👉 https://lnkd.in/eZYbJ2Pk

🎯 In May 2024, we decided on our latest group of grant recipients, approving 12 grants worth just over EUR 400,000 supporting litigation to advance digital rights in Europe. This included reaching the major milestone of EUR 4 million granted in total since we started in 2018. We’ve now made over 110 grants. 👉🏿 Read our latest summer update on grants we are supporting: https://lnkd.in/ecKwBwrA 🖼 Illustration by Berenice Alvarez and Laura Lopez

Grateful that I recently got to attend the strategic litigation retreat hosted by Digital Freedom Fund in the beautiful German countryside. I had the pleasure of meeting fantastic individuals all keen on pursuing platform accountability and digital rights. The breadth of cases each person was working on amazed me that I think its safe to conclude that big tech has the capability to either enrich or destroy our lives. Thank you so much to the organisers, DFF, who did an amazing job in coordinating the sessions and also helping me through frustrating immigration drudgery. It's still very unfortunate that professionals coming from the global majority have to be subjected to long, discriminatory and inhumane immigration procedures. Thank you also to my new friends and colleagues, I can't wait to see the amazing cases that will come out of our time together. Anabel K. Arias Gabrielle Dunn César Manso-Sayao Trajche Janushev Anastasia Karagianni romain lanneau Tijana Stevanović Mitzi László

🚀 Our second Cohort for Policy Practitioners is underway! These Cohorts complement our Emerging Leader Cohorts and address more advanced practices and topics, designed to align with the goals of more experienced practitioners. We are pleased that participants come from different parts of the digital policy ecosystem, those focused on strategic litigation, media regulation, digital rights advocacy, research and analysis. Meet the members of our fifth Cohort: 🌟 César Manso-Sayao is passionate about human rights-based, decolonial, open-source and social innovation approaches to address the digital age's emerging challenges, and is a Legal Officer at the Digital Freedom Fund. 🌟 Gautam K. is an experienced public policy analyst, currently advising the Center on Regulation in Europe’s (CERRE) project “Global Governance for the Digital Ecosystems”. 🌟 Sarah Simms is a dedicated, passionate human rights professional with investigative, policy and research experience, and is a Policy Officer at Privacy International. 🌟 Valery Otieno Otieno is passionate about culture and creating a caring internet for all, and is a Policy Advisor at Ofcom, the UK media regulator. 💬 Read more about the policy challenges and outcomes for this cohort: https://lnkd.in/ektrT5dd

The Spanish version of our "Digital Rights are Charter Rights" essay series is OUT! 🎊 🎉🚀 Estamos muy contentos de publicar la versión en español de nuestra serie de ensayos «Digital Rights are Charter Rights». Esta serie articula cómo los derechos digitales son también derechos de la Carta de los Derechos Fundamentales de la UE, como parte de nuestro proyecto digiRISE. Cada ensayo examina una disposición de la Carta y detalla cómo se aplica y es relevante para los entornos digitales y en red. Queremos agradecer sinceramente a nuestros expertos por compartir sus valiosos conocimientos: Anna Mazgal de Wikimedia Europe, romain lanneau de Statewatch, Jens Theilen de la Universidad Helmut-Schmidt de Hamburgo, Raphaële Xenidis de la Facultad de Derecho Sciences Po, Nadia Benaissa de Bits of Freedom, Ioannis Kouvakas de Privacy International y Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Giulia Gentile de LSE Law School, Melanie Fink de Leiden Law School, Nawal Mustafa de Stichting PILP, Divij Joshi de UCL, James Farrar de Worker Info Exchange, Fieke Jansen de critical infrastructure lab, University of Amsterdam y Green Screen Climate Justice and Digital Rights Coalition, y Alexandre Biard de BEUC - The European Consumer Organisation. Muchas gracias también a nuestra traductora al español, Nafsika Petkou, y a Haris Papageorgiou por la edición en español. También queremos agradecer a nuestro talentoso equipo de artistas su contribución a la serie de ensayos: Yorgos Konstantinou, Justina Leston y Nicole Snaiderman. Muchas gracias por su increible arte y visión! El proyecto digiRISE está financiado por la Unión Europea. Todas las opiniones expresadas pertenecen a los autores Encontrará la versión completa de la serie de ensayos aquí ⤵️. https://lnkd.in/eCWw2SRJ