More than forty civil society groups recently released this statement as a response to the European Declaration on Digital Rights and Principles for the Digital Decade, which was signed in December 2022.
The signatories of the statement “welcome the attention to sustainability and the need to avoid environmental harm” in the EU declaration and highlight “the growing recognition that there is a need for alternatives to the dominant commercial platforms and the extractive practices that dominate the online environment today.”
The central argument of the statement is this:
“To create more socially-oriented and climate-friendly digital spaces and ensure the sovereignty of communities and our societies as a whole, Europe needs to invest in digital commons and public digital infrastructures.”
“As a concrete first step” towards that end, the statement proposes that “the EU and its Member States should set up a European Public Digital Infrastructure fund” which “should be tasked with supporting the development and maintenance of digital public infrastructure that delivers public value by providing citizens and institutions with alternatives to commercial digital infrastructures.”
Read the full statement here.
Reblogger 