by Ralph Bolliger
Digital participation has become a prerequisite for social participation. We work, learn, organize politically, maintain relationships, and exercise our rights increasingly through digital systems. Those who are excluded from these systems—or structurally disadvantaged within them—lose real freedom.
Yet the rules of this digital world were not written by the people who live in it. They were cast into code by actors we did not elect, for purposes we did not define, often optimized for profit, efficiency, or control rather than for human dignity.
That is why the central question is not a technical one, but a political one:
Who controls your digital identity—and who makes decisions based on it?
You? Or companies whose business models rely on behavioral prediction? Or state
systems that derive power from opacity and data access?
Freedom begins where people retain control over the decisions that affect them. Digital data is not neutral raw material. It represents behavior, relationships, preferences, and risks—and is used to allocate or deny opportunities. Whoever controls this data holds power over people.
We were told: “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.”
But privacy is not protection for wrongdoing; it is a precondition for freedom.
A society without privacy is a society governed by self-censorship, conformity,
and fear—and one in which democratic agency steadily erodes.
The cypherpunks of the 1990s were right: without encryption, there is no
security online. But they were only partly right. Security alone does not
create self-determination.
When protective tools are understood only by experts, usable only by the
privileged, and maintained only at high personal cost, technology merely shifts
power—it does not distribute it.
Digital self-determination therefore requires more than tools. It requires structures.
Today, privacy is effectively a luxury. You can afford it if you have the time,
knowledge, and money. But what about people working multiple jobs? Migrants
without secure legal status? Teenagers for whom a smartphone is their only
connection to the world?
These people do not need only technical safeguards. They need systems that do
not force them to become experts in order to be safe, visible, and capable of
acting. They need justice by design.
Technology is not neutral. Every architecture encodes assumptions about what is desirable, permissible, or profitable. Every algorithm prioritizes values—explicitly or implicitly. Platforms are not mere intermediaries. They structure attention, behavior, and opportunity. And they concentrate power.
At the same time, governments around the world are building digital control infrastructures—often in close partnership with private platforms. Under the banners of security, efficiency, or innovation, systems emerge that normalize surveillance and undermine democratic oversight.
Digital self-determination means drawing a line.
Enough opaque systems deciding access to credit, work, visibility, or freedom of
movement without being explainable or contestable.
Enough business models optimized for manipulation, dependency, and perpetual
behavioral extraction.
Enough design that treats people as resources rather than as holders of rights.
We need a digital world built on dignity rather than dominance.
A world where trust matters more than tracking.
Where privacy is not an optional feature, but the default.
And where trade-offs—between security and freedom, innovation and control—are
made explicit and decided democratically, rather than hidden in code.
And we do not have to wait.
- Demand and build systems that make user control, transparency, and open standards non-negotiable—especially where digital decisions shape real life outcomes.
- Develop and defend public digital infrastructures that serve the common good and resist both private monopolization and state abuse of power.
- Design algorithms and digital processes so that fairness, accountability, and human dignity take precedence over maximum engagement.
- Establish digital rights that do not expire with terms-of-service updates or platform changes.
This work is not the task of an elite. It needs educators and designers, caregivers and lawyers, parents, artists, activists, skeptics—and you. Digital self-determination emerges wherever people intervene: in education, design, procurement, legislation, organization, and public debate.
You do not need to write code to make history.
Reject passivity. Refuse to accept power hidden behind interfaces. Demand
participation. Build. Question loudly.
Be a disturbance in the server rack.
Digital self-determination begins now.
And it begins with us.