Coding Rights - Annual Report 2024

HACKING PATRIARCHY SINCE 2015

Coding Rights is a feminist organization that contributes to the debates about the development, implementation and regulation of technologies from a collective, transfeminist, decolonial, and antiracist perspective of human rights.

We utilize creativity and hacker knowledge to stimulate imaginaries and actions that challenge power inequalities. We act locally to have a global impact through a network of partner organizations, collectives, and inspiring thinkers.

We believe in advocating for a truly participatory democracy and work towards bridging the gap between institutional politics and the discussions, reflections, and expressions that take place within social movements and activist circles.

Our activities and expertise include research; policy advocacy; creative and visual storytelling; development of tech tools; digital care and technopolitics training; design of methodologies and facilitation of creative processes.

TECHNOLOGIES, BODIES & TERRITORIES

Digital technologies are gradually integrating our bodies and territories. Terminologies such as Biometric Identification, Smart Cities, Big Data, A.I, Internet of Things, and VR are gradually showing up in public discourses as “innovative solutions” to improve public services and national security. But they can also pose a significant threat to citizen's privacy, freedom of expression, and right to association, and even make us vulnerable to cyber-attacks. How do we walk freely in a territory surveilled by both companies and governments? How are all these new technologies changing our relations with our bodies and territories? Who is mining the data we produce in these relations? Who profits from it? Who gets excluded or more exposed? Are we restating colonial relationships disguised as innovation? Are smart cities actually meant to be fueled by social environmental conflicts, digital colonialism and waste?

Platform and Workshops

Tech Cartographies Map

In 2024, the Tech Cartographies Map continued to circulate in workshops with partner organizations in different regions of the country and was present at events such as CryptoRave and the Planeta Ella immersion. It was also used as a tool in an activity with city council candidates in Rio de Janeiro, who gathered to discuss technology and public policies at the municipal level. During our anniversary action, the map was presented to Minister Sonia Guajajara and to other partners in Brazil and around the world. In addition, the platform has been used in training processes by partners such as Sinpro-SP and in academic work.

Access the platform here.

Platform

Why is Artificial Intelligence a feminist issue?

This is the central question of Not My A.I., an ongoing project that seeks to contribute to the creation of a feminist toolkit capable of questioning algorithmic decision-making systems implemented by so-called Digital Welfare States. Throughout 2024, the project has been present in different spaces, providing inputs for debate and reflection, such as the Artificial Intelligence and Gender workshop organized by Revista AzMina, activities at the Institute for Advanced Studies at USP, a gathering in Rio Grande do Sul in partnership with Lab Hacker and the Mulheres de Rede network, as well as two events at UFRJ during the university’s Festival of Knowledge.

Access the platform here.

Research

The Compost Engineers and Sus Saberes Lentos

“The Compost Engineers and Sus Saberes Lentos” is another ongoing research project that seeks alternatives and aims to highlight what is left out of decolonial imaginaries when we use the term “AI.” It is a terminology shaped by Hollywood and Silicon Valley industries to historically imply a metallic, silver, white male–led future. Instead, we propose this research as a reconnection with the land and with ancestral technologies that are regenerative for our territories. An article emerging from this research was released at the FAIR event in 2024.

Seminar

AI for Common Good, with Timnit Gebru

In 2024, Coding Rights, in partnership with MediaLab, Lavits, and Instituto da Hora, organized the seminar AI for the Common Good, held at UFRJ. The event brought together several researchers, artists, and public-sector representatives who play key roles in the debate on technology, ethics, AI regulation, and its social impacts. As a follow-up, an interview was also conducted with Timnit Gebru, an international reference in the critique of artificial intelligence systems.

Fostering a Federated AI Commons Ecosystem

The policy briefing “Fostering a Federated AI Commons Ecosystem” is a co-authored work by Joana Varon, Timnit Gebru, and Sasha Costanza-Chock, submitted to the T20 (the G20 engagement group). It presents practical recommendations to encourage the decentralized development of artificial intelligence. The document has informed debates in various spaces, such as meetings organized by the Open Source Foundation, discussions on the role of OpenAI, and an event on new economies.

Read the briefing here.

HACKING PATRIARCHAL VIOLENCES & ENVISIONING FEMINIST FUTURES

Technologies are designed embedded with subjective values from the ones who develop or deploy them, most likely, white cis male from the Global North. Therefore, the future is likely to replicate many of the social inequalities that human rights movements fight against. To redress this scenario, this area of work has the goals to map and expose intersectional dimensions of power imbalances, considering race, gender, class, sexuality, etc behind digital technologies; raise awareness through creativity and community building; promote advocacy within feminist agendas in digital rights and foster our imagination for better futures and positive agendas through exercises of speculative futures in which technologies can be developed under transfeminist values.

Research

AI Commons

The AI Commons research launched in 2024 aimed to map and understand the emerging ecosystem of alternative AI initiatives. Coding Rights and One Project conducted a field scan of 247 key entities — including organizations, cooperatives, collectives, networks, companies, innovative projects, conferences, and fellowship programs — across the Americas, Europe, and Africa. The study identified a variety of frameworks in use, such as AI as Commons, Decolonial AI, Feminist AI, Antiracist AI, and Postcapitalist AI, and assessed which entities align most closely with One Project’s mission and JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity, Decolonization, Inclusion) principles.

Read the research here.

Platform

The Oracle for Transfeminist Technologies

In 2024, we continued using the Oracle for Transfeminist Technologies to conduct workshops with partner organizations across different regions of Brazil, at events such as CryptoRave, and in partnership with Revista AzMina in an Artificial Intelligence and Gender workshop. We also distributed dozens of decks to various national and international partners. As part of Coding Rights’ anniversary celebration, an Oracle deck was presented to researchers, journalists, parliamentarians, and partners, encouraging more and more people across different regions of Brazil to collectively envision new technologies.

Check the platform here.

Platform

M.A.M.I. Musea

A museum from the future, set in 3021 to exhibit pieces of feminist resistance against different forms of patriarchal violences. The idea for this project emerged in a workshop in Santiago, Chile, with a group of feminists artists and activists and support from Hivos.

Check the platform here.

Workshops

Una Bolsa de Semillas — Ciencia Ficción Feminista en Abya Yala

In partnership with APC Tech Joy, we conducted a series of workshops aimed at nurturing science fiction narratives and imagining technologies based on the imaginaries of the territories. There were 150 registrations from writers, artists, and activists from Latin America and the Caribbean, of which 10 were selected and participated in 8 online meetings that resulted in a science fiction short story.

KNOWLEDGE SHARING AND DIGITAL CARE

The increase in digitalization, accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, has intensified online violence with serious offline consequences for human rights activists. In Brazil, this is worsened by the rise of far-right groups using digital spaces to target women, LGBTQIA+ people, Black activists, sexual and reproductive rights defenders, and residents of favelas who challenge the dominant white, cis, heteronormative social order. Combined with the profit-driven model of mainstream social media, this creates digital environments prone to gender-based political violence, hate, threats, and misinformation.

Project

Safer Sisters

In 2024, the Safer Sisters project carried out the translation of its GIFs into Italian. The initiative expanded the reach of awareness campaigns to international audiences.

Meet the project here.

Network

Transfeminist Network for Digital Security Trainers

In 2024, there was continued engagement with the Transfeminist Network for Digital Security Trainers. The partnership strengthened the training of agents in digital security with a transfeminist perspective. The activities enabled the exchange of experiences and the strengthening of collective strategies for online protection.

EMERGENCY RESPONSES TO PUBLIC POLICIES

Sometimes, shifts in the political context require emergency actions that turn research into advocacy. This is what this area of work is about. And, as the internet is global, we nurture national, regional and global coalitions and/or networks to have strategic and collective engagement within policymakers in national, regional and international fora. Furthermore, we have also observed a growing demand for building digital security capacities and giving support during attacks due to the increase of threats against women, LGBTQI people, artists, journalists and activists in Brazil. To reply to this scenario, we have co-started a Network of Transfeminist Digital Security Trainers in Brazil to cope with the need for such emergency responses.

Advocacy

Programmatic contribution to municipal public policies

In 2024, Coding Rights, in partnership with various candidates for city council in cities of the Metropolitan Region of Rio de Janeiro in the 2024 elections, developed a programmatic contribution on technology and municipal public policies. The objective was to propose guidelines for building more democratic cities, focusing on reducing digital inequalities and strengthening citizen participation through the ethical and transparent use of technologies.

Campaign Tire Meu Rosto da Sua Mira — Banning facial recognition in public spaces

In 2024, Coding Rights continued to engage in the campaign Tire Meu Rosto da Sua Mira, which advocates for the general ban of Facial Recognition Technologies in the Brazilian public security field, given the evidence of their abusive and non-transparent use. The ability to individually identify and track people undermines rights such as privacy, data protection, freedom of expression and assembly, equality and non-discrimination.

Visit the campaign here.

Coalition

Platform Regulation and Misinformation: Engagement at SAD

During 2024, Coding Rights participated in regular meetings at SAD – Articulation Room against Disinformation, promoting the exchange of research diagnoses and contributing to joint analyses on bill 2630/2020. In an articulation of organizations that are part of SAD, academic institutions, and the Rights on the Net Coalition, a statement was drafted highlighting the importance of approving the bill for the regulation of digital platforms. Additionally, a document was also prepared repudiating the attacks by Meta and the far right on Netlab UFRJ, a reference research institution that identified fraud in Big Tech platform advertisements.

Read the statement here.

MAIN EVENTS, CONFERENCES AND WORKSHOPS IN 2024

CR team participated in several events, conferences and workshops in Brazil, Latin America and around the world.
<< sidescroll for our highlights >>

Panel “Internet Extinction”Promoted by Editora Funilaria — Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Workshop: Artificial Intelligence and GenderHeld by Revista AzMina — Online

Acampamento Terra Livre (ATL)Brasília, Brazil

NETmundial +10São Paulo, Brazil

G20 Dialogue: Information IntegritySão Paulo, Brazil

Workshop “Materializing the Cloud”Mapping impacts of the current technological development model on our territories and imagining other futures. Promoted by Heinrich Böll Stiftung and Coding Rights — Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Workshop “Oracle of Transfeminist Technologies”CryptoRave — São Paulo, Brazil

Workshop “Map of Internet Territories”CryptoRave — São Paulo, Brazil

Panel at HKWGermany — Online

Panel “Better Utopias: Resisting Silicon Valley Ideology and Decolonizing Our Imaginaries of the Future”FAccT — Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Panel “Designing for the Long Tail: Case Studies in Contextual ML Design”FAccT — Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

AI for the Common Good: Strengthening Alternative SystemsHeld by Coding Rights, DAIR, Instituto da Hora and MediaLab UFRJ — Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Panel “Building Alternatives in the Public Interest”Seminar Political Economy of AI, Data, and Digital Technologies, Global Learning & Strategy Convening — Mexico City, Mexico

Conversatorio “Inteligencia Artificial y feminismos desde el cono sur”Held by the Feminist AI Research Network — Mexico City, Mexico

Internews MeetingLa Paz, Bolivia

4th Project Cycle of the Latin American ChapterFeminist AI Research Network f<a+i>r — Online

Panel “Algorithms for diverse worlds”UFRJ Knowledge Festival — Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Workshop “Materializing the Cloud”Technopolitics, Human Rights and Public Policies for Cities of the Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan Region — Rio de Janeiro, Brazil