Safe Havens for Digital Refugees

Read for free https://acuity.design/safe-havens-for-digital-refugees/

Facebook yesterday declared that it was eliminating fact checking and moving content safety staff from California to Texas. In doing so, it declared that it was explicitly becoming an unsafe and untruthful place. A place that supported abuse and coercion by not having any guardrails using its power and privilege (community notes have neither).

With Twitter already lost to its owner’s whims and random spites, a whole section of the social media platforms have become poisoned places.

I have friends who use Facebook’s infrastructure for their hidden community groups. They moved there as it offered much better capabilities than the ListServ systems used before. The groups are hidden as the topics are open to abuse when visible more generally (home education is one I am part of too).

With the changes to Facebook, these community places and these people have become digital refugees. Where they live physically is unaffected but where they live digitally has become unsafe.

What is needed is Safe Havens for Digital Refugees.

However, I’m not sure this has been done before nor that civic society has considered it as an issue.

There are international treaties which guide nation states and global agencies on what to do and what to offer to people who are physically displaced.

What happens now when the digital equivalent is occurring?

The tools and methods for building social media platforms are well known. Many of the staff who designed and managed Facebook and Twitter have been made unemployed by those same corporations.

Yet it is not private industry and philanthropy that seems appropriate for building safe havens. This is what civic society and governments are for. The capabilities in depth of time and trust that corporations cannot offer.

A safe haven is a temporary place to recover and rebuild from. Any digital infrastructure is a place to take data and identities to and keep them safe from abuse.

Other platforms, built by private or community companies, can compete to be the places where refugees choose to go to. In a Knowledge Economy, there is both value and meaning in such digital immigration.

Governments need to recognise that this is where they can offer help to people who are abused and terrified.

Building digital safe haven offers a way out for people in need.

Originally published at https://acuity.design on January 8, 2025.