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Kampnagel invited me to organize an event. So it became a conference on the influence of networked technology on democracy.

We are witnessing a revolutionary redistribution of power. Since the campaigns for Brexit, Donald Trump and later Emmanuel Macron, the public has become aware of how extensively social media tools like micro-targeting, bots and commercial surveillance are being used to gain political power. We ourselves have changed too. Fake news, meme-wars and conspiracy theories have shaken our belief in truth and facts; online hate speech has altered how we talk to each other.

Program
11:00 AM

Short introduction and welcome by Hannes Grassegger and Lena Kollender ( Co-Curator International Summer Festival)

11:15 AM - 1:00 PM
PANEL: Disrupting Democracy

How does it work? Which are the foundations of digital exertion of influence? This panel will discuss techno-economic mechanisms that underlie the disruption of democracy. It will begin with an insight into the hidden data markets for personal data. through which information about citizens is increasingly flowing into the circulationCommercially available citizen information that has become of political the fundament to new opinion-forming processes. Then Antonio Garcia Martínez former advisor to Twitter and product manager for Facebook will show us how these mechanisms are used today.this data is being used to influence individuals. He has created Facebook’s ad-targeting system, which has become the decisive marketing mechanism for political campaigning. Paul Hilder, co-founder of Crowdpac, formerly vice president of Change.org and part of Bernie Sanders' campaigning-team for the US-presidential election in 2016 will show the democratic potentials of these developments.
WITH Richard Gutjahr (DE), Paul Hilder (UK), Antonio Garcia Martínez (US) MODERATION Hannes Grassegger (CH)

2:00 PM – 4:00 PM
PANEL: DISRUPTING THE PARTY

From Italy to Brexit – across Europe, digital political movements have recently been shaking the world of political parties. In this panel, Ulrike Guérot, leading visionary on the future of the European Union and professor for European politics and democracy research will discuss the strategies of Europe’s digital movements with experts from UK, Italy and Switzerland. Guardian reporter Carole Cadwalladr, who investigated the digital side of the Brexit campaign; Italian tech-journalist Fabio Chiusi (Espresso, WIRED) who has researched how the populist Italian MoVimento 5 Stelle pioneered digital campaigning, and Silvian Gisler, Co-Founder and Co-Managing Director of Operation Libero who challenged the leading populist party through a no-money grassroots Facebook campaign.
WITH Carole Cadwalladr (UK), Fabio Chiusi (IT), Silvan Gisler (CH) MODERATION Ulrike Guérot (DE)

5:00 PM – 7:00 PM
PANEL: BUILDING A NEW STATE

New technologies are radically transforming our idea of community – and subsequently statehood. How will future states look like? And how should they look like? Disaster researcher Malka Older, author of the highly acclaimed cyberpunk thrillers "Infomocracy" and “Null States” will discuss digital governance with Shoshana Zuboff. Since the early 1980s Zuboff’s career has been devoted to the study of the rise of the digital, its individual, organizational, and social consequences. She coined the term “commercial surveillance” and is now working on her book "Master or Slave? The Fight for the Soul of Our Information Civilization".

This final discussion about new forms of digitalized governance and its impact on the individual will be moderated by one of the world’s leading experts on cyber security Samir Saran, Vice President of the Observer Research Foundation in Delhi.

WITH Malka Older (US, via Skype), Shoshana Zuboff, PhD (US, via Skype) MODERATION Samir Saran, PhD (IN) CO-CHAIR Hannes Grassegger (CH)

The Team:

Concept: Hannes Grassegger in cooperation with Lena Kollender (Co-Curator International Summer Festival)

Stage Design: Johanna Landt
Stage Manager: Rados Vujaklija

There are videos of the sessions! Find them here: http://www.kampnagel.de/en/program/disrupting-democracy/

So I had this trove of secret Facebook documents. Basically their rules of what you are allowed to see when on Facebook. My colleague Till Krause and me published two stories on the subject starting in late 2016. German law was changed through this. There is a clause now demanding transparency over the facebook censors' working conditions. It changed their job, and hopefully for the better.

But Facebook itself didn't seem to really listen to us writing in German, even if it came out in Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazine. So I reached out to Julia Angwin, one of the finest reporters in the digital space. We met in Zürich and on we went...

Here is the full report.

Some weeks after the publication something strange happened. Not only had Facebook started to publish lengthy explanations of their secret censorship rules, also they changed their laws. Black kids now get special protection from Facebook. Thanks to Julia, Stephen, Georg, and Christian – and thanks to those hundreds of thousands of readers pushing the story globally making it having an impact.