A Shared Path: Reinventing an Internet in Latin America that Serves People, not Power

Academics and digital rights advocates from across Latin America participating in the workshop ‘The Digital Utopia: Reimagining the Internet and Digital Technologies,’ held as part of the 13th annual ‘Towards a Free Internet’ event organized by the Centre for Studies on Freedom of Expression (CELE). Image by Solana Babicola, CC BY 4.0, via CELE.

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Written by: Amalia Toledo, Lead Public Policy Specialist for Latin America and the Caribbean at the Wikimedia Foundation; Veridiana Alimonti, Associate Director for Latin American Policy at Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); Ramiro Álvarez Ugarte, Deputy Director of Centro de Estudios en Libertad de Expresión (CELE).

For more than thirty years, the digital rights movement in Latin America was driven by the promise of a free, open, and secure internet. But let’s be honest: that vision is far from our current reality. Today, the initial optimism has been replaced by a justified and widespread “techlash” as we face mass surveillance, market monopolies, and the rise of authoritarianism, social and political trends where digital technologies and the way in which they restructure power play an increasingly central role.

We are witnessing a surge in the pragmatism of force, which is building a dangerous momentum as it seeks to override basic principles grounded in democratic and rights-based values. More and more, authoritarian and populist leaders find common ground with tech oligarchs, mutually reinforcing each others’ power. Tech giants often secure their market dominance and global reach by complying with abusive state demands — by censoring dissent, granting access to people’s data and routines, and/or fueling control through other digital means. In return, regulatory efforts to put checks on extractive digital business models are stalled and conveniently falter. Such predatory synergies amass wealth, entrench power, and erode the democratic foundations that should guide the free flow of information.

Meanwhile, even in established democracies, the internet’s surveillance potential is increasingly viewed as an asset rather than a risk. Policymakers and regulators, worried about disinformation and hate speech, have pushed for increased control over online speech in ways that are not always transparent, accountable, or proportionate.

For these various reasons, moving toward the ideal of an open internet that functions as a public good is at stake. It was this sense of urgency that brought together a group of Latin American digital rights organizations and academics. With support from the Wikimedia**** Foundation, they organized a Zero Day Workshop as a side event of the 13th edition of the “Towards a Free Internet” workshop, held annually by the Centro de Estudios en Libertad de Expresión (CELE). The goal of the group, which included the authors of this blog post, was simple yet challenging: to move from merely resisting setbacks to actively proposing the future of the internet we want.

Dreaming of a “digital utopia” as a public good

Building on Wikimedia’s vision of access to knowledge as a human right, the Zero Day Workshop began by imagining a “digital utopia.” From our perspective, this is not a fantasy, but rather a defense of the internet as a digital public interest project. As we debated whether to focus on abstract ideals or concrete practices, we reached consensus on the need to determine shared goals in order to navigate the current reality of how media capture has shifted and expanded to become platform capture.

This meant politicizing our vision through critical questioning: shifting from a narrow focus on technical fixes to a broader interrogation of who holds power and how our current digital structures serve specific agendas at the expense of the public good. For example, participants debated whether the traditional human rights framework must be expanded to address contemporary challenges and material barriers that distance us from an internet for the public good. We also discussed how to reclaim concepts like security and freedom, reframing them to move beyond technical or state-centric definitions. Finally, there was a strong consensus on the urgent need to broaden our collaboration with other social movements and catalyze strategic alliances with independent journalists, digital workers, technology company employees, among others, to find common ground, necessary to protect the public interest through collective effort.

While there are challenges in embracing and developing technologies based on the principles of openness and community collaboration — which are difficult to overcome, as we must contend with technical barriers, the monopoly power of established networks, and corporate giants protecting their profits — these efforts remain essential to our shared pursuit of a public interest internet.

Building shared principles

The workshop discussion led to identifying six shared principles that can help align regional needs with a global vision of open, people-driven technology. These fundamental pillars are:

1. Democracy and Participation. Promote participatory governance and transparency to empower communities and further enable their agency.

2. Decolonization, Diversity, and Epistemology. Revitalize and resignify shared principles through international cooperation, especially South-South, and restore or create the link between culture and technology, ensuring our digital future is shaped by a plurality of worldviews rather than dictated by the biases of a few dominant tech hubs.

3. Autonomy and Tech Appropriation. Encourage contextual technological development defined by community, not by markets.

4. Territoriality, Collectivity, and Community. Develop mechanisms to protect digital public goods and other shared resources and commons.

5. Access and Equity. Advance net neutrality and community networks to shift from dependent, top-down access to active empowerment and community-led digital sovereignty, where local groups, not just states or corporations, own and govern their own infrastructure.

6. Economic Justice and Power Decentralization. Strengthen civil society’s anti-monopoly capabilities and develop public interest alternatives to tech giants, including open technologies, community-owned services, and digital public goods, so as to challenge power concentration and monopolistic practices in business models.

What comes next?

Buenos Aires provided a vital foundation for reimagining our regional digital space, but it was only the beginning. The depth of our discussions catalyzed an ongoing process of community reflection and alignment. The path forward is to bridge our diverse experiences and refine our core concepts so we reach a shared understanding of both our policy objectives and the strategic and tactical challenges ahead. This is not an overnight task. It requires building collective political clarity on what is needed to ensure the internet serves the public interest.

We invite you to join this conversation so that we can work together to realize our shared vision and, strategically and collectively, create the digital future that our region deserves.