Youth-led digital governance: turning utopia into reality through policy praxis and collective action

If you believe that transformation can only happen with collective action, this session is for you. Young people are the most digitally connected age group worldwide, but concerns over data justice and digital rights do not seem to be evolving as fast as the evolution of data generation, collection and treatment from the same group. The unmindful adoption of data-centric systems has provoked the emergence of an algorithmic type of governance that does not fully assess the potential risks caused by such practices. To fight inequalities and power imbalances, youth, women, the LGBTQIA+ community and other minorities should be at the forefront of internet governance. Most of us, young people, are unwired in the digital space when it comes to activism. We often engage with political content on social media and closely follow those few figures who manage to grab our attention in topics like digital rights, data privacy, or regulation. How can we leverage our shared values and common interests to push the issues that matter to us? How can we get a (permanent) seat at decision-making tables? These are some of the questions guiding this meetup. This session at Re:publica aims to merge the efforts of young leaders to envisage the most effective ways to build feminist techno-political frameworks for human rights-based development, deployment and usages of technologies. By the end of the session we aspire to see come to surface a small seed of a youth-led horizontal initiative advocating for a rights-based internet governance.  We invite folks of all backgrounds - and ages - to join. This seems like an important opportunity to learn from experienced activists of all sorts lessons for collective action through a co-creation process that center's young people's interests. We will implement collective action tools and techniques to maintain an organized workshop-debate for all.