Collective data ownership

The action of producing data is intrinsically collective and its value emerges when its aggregated. Only by collectively demanding the ownership over our data we can fight against big tech companies. Data is not treated as private property, but to serve the commons.

  Individual and collective   Privacy

We demand consensual boundaries of which kinds of data we consider private, thus having individual sovereignty over it, and which kinds are collective.

   Data Exploitation

We demand an end to the exploitation of our data for economic, military or political purposes. Cases like Project Maven exemplify how our labour filling captchas for Google is being exploited to train AI technology secretly sold to the US Drone Program.

   Data Cooperativism

We support ecosystems in which the citizens-workers-owners are in control of their production of data, the workers of Data Cooperatives choose what kinds of data they produce and collect, following the common good and not profit.

Data Tax & Data Basic Income

We explore the proposition of a data tax deriving into a monthly payment in exchange for the data produced, indepentently of categories like gender, nationality, class or any other. This is what we call a Data Basic Income: a fixed payment for our production of data.

   Workers Struggle

The Data Workers Union aims to shift the unbalance between the ownership, control and profit of data produced by the workers versus the companies. The union strives to develop a network of unions which elaborates a series of political proposals articulating and pursuing our Data Labour Rights.

   Digital Colonialism

Increasingly, US-based big tech companies set up digital infrastructure and services in the famework of "humanitarian tech" in places like the global south, however their main purpose is to colonialize data production and exploit data labour from those places. This practice must end.

   Public Infrastructure

As we become increasingly dependent of services like social media they should become a public infrastructure to be run and controlled by the commons. We oppose nationalising the current gatekeepers of big data as a step forward.

   Political Organisation

We push for a political agenda through which citizens become political agents as workers, operating under the framework of Data Labour Rights. We want citizens to influence and gain control over big tech by creating a large, citizen-based body of influence.

Media

• re:publica
• Vice Motherboard (IT)
• Kleine Zeitung (AT)
• Street Press (FR)
• Thoughts on Collectivism
• NPO radio: Argos (NL)
• Tactical Technology Collective

Current events

   Past events

•      Burning out Digital Colonialism
•      Data Workers Union Venice
•      Somerset House
•      Data Workers Union The Hague (2)
•      Glass Room
•      Data Workers Union The Hague
•      Data Workers Union Buenos Aires