Our top picks for RightsCon 2021

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! No, not the holidays, it’s RightsCon season!

RightsCon is the world’s leading summit on human rights in the digital age, hosted by our friends at Access Now. It will take place 7-11 June and it will, once again, be entirely virtual. 

But, with over 500 sessions across 20 program streams in 5 days… it’s a lot. Decisions, decisions! Plus, if you’re in Australia, things get tricky with timezones. The program can be daunting, so we’ve gone through and picked out our favourites, all tailored to a *reasonable* Australia-based sleep cycle.

But first, we want to tell you about the session Digital Rights Watch is running! 

On Tuesday 8th of June at 2pm AEST / 12pm AWST, we’re hosting our session on: Rebalancing the Internet Economy: A closer look at Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code. 

Screenshot from RightsCon program platform showing Digital Rights Watch session and the three speakers: Lucie Krahulcova, Lizzie O'Shea, and Rebecca Giblin.

We won’t spend too long recapping what happened in the bargaining code, rather we will be looking at what local internet economies look like on the global web and how rebalancing the local and global economies could help facilitate a more equitable system! 

Lucie’s Top Picks

Date + Time (AEST)Session Title
Tuesday 8th
10am
Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) our saviour from environmental catastrophe.
Tuesday 8th
2pm 
Rebalancing the Internet Economy: A closer look at Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code
Tuesday 8th
7.30pm 
Litigating COVID-19: contact tracing apps, immunity passports, disinformation and more.
Tuesday 8th
10pm 
How to respond to advanced digital threats to civil society? 
Tuesday 8th
11.15pm 
Aligning content moderation with human rights principles
Wednesday 9th
4:30pm 
Creating Engaging Campaigns: A holistic methodology to create impactful campaigns
Wednesday 9th
11pm
Re-envisioning digital education: The pandemic’s fallout and the future of inclusive education
Thursday 10th
6.45pm
What comes after Digital Identity? Digital Public Goods and Data Infrastructures
Thursday 10th
10.30pm
Reporting on Digital Rights Beyond Silicon Valley

Sam’s Top Picks

Date + Time (AEST)Session Title
Tuesday 8th
6:15pm
Inside the black box: Making public-sector algorithms accountable to citizens and communities
Tuesday 8th
10pm 
Alternative Frameworks for Sexual Content Moderation
Wednesday 9th
11:45am 
Co-creating a feminist internet: feminst discourse and solutions
to online violence and hatred based on gender, race, caste and other indicies 
Wednesday 9th
4:30pm 
Data Protection from the inside: value-based data practice for civil society 
Wednesday 9th
9:45pm 
“Hey you, stop filming!” Defending smartphone witnessing and the Right
to Record globally. What do we need to do?
Thursday 10th
7:15am 
We Keep Us Safe: An Indigenized Guide to Reproductive Justice and Cyber Safety.
Thursday 10th
6:45pm
Choose your own Ad’venture!’ A strategy session on how digital
violence affects queer people, and our strategies of resistance. 
Thursday 10th
8pm
Fireside chat: Lina al-Hathloul, Wafa Mustafa, and Marwa Fatafta
Thursday 10th
9:15pm
Surveillance capitalism meets extractivism: how ads online are killing the planet