Realising the unfulfilled promise of an interconnected world

The internet was developed by the US military as a system of interconnected computer networks in the 1960s. The open internet as we know it was born in the 1990s when Tim Berners-Lee developed the HTTP web protocol that gave all content on the network equal status and anyone could connect to any content by clicking on a hyperlink.  Thus the internet was conceptualised to have  no central control and presented the promise of an egalitarian world where everyone enjoyed equal and unrestricted freedom of expression and could access the total repository of human knowledge and opinion.

Alas, this vision of an interconnected world remains largely a mirage as barriers to connectivity have seen a widening digital divide and infotech has emerged as the largest industry by market capitalization on the planet –  generating R201 billion rand in revenue in South Africa in 2020. An affluent urban minority of the global population gets ever faster and cheaper network access whilst the majority are either captured by profiteering telecom monopolies offering weak and expensive network access – or are excluded completely. 

Like colonial dispossession in the global south and preceding that, the enclosure of the commons in Europe,  the interconnectedness and openness promised by the early internet has been significantly undermined by increasing commercial and state control. We’ve seen rising  paywalls (where accessing content requires a credit card)  and large corporations like Facebook that create ‘walled gardens’ where people are crowded together and their personal information is harvested for profit, as well as  mass and targeted state surveillance aimed at managing populations and suppressing dissent. 

Despite these limitations and risks, there remains a strong counter movement to defend and expand internet access and freedom. This movement is guided by visions like the Feminist Principles of the Internet and African Declaration on Internet Rights and Freedoms. Open user created non-profit projects range from millions of small user published websites and services to large content initiatives like encyclopedia Wikipedia or map service Open Street Map. A vibrant free/libre/open source software (FLOSS) community develops a range of open, secure, and non-commercial technical solutions. And projects around the world are building community and publicly owned telecoms networks – the Internet from Below. 

The proposed Infotech Collective will join the struggle to expand network access and enable the right to decomidified and private communication for movements confronting unjust power. 

Privacy, Surveillance & Censorship

Globally the internet is under siege from imperial intelligence agencies who collect, store and analyze massive amounts of communications, including telephone calls, e-mail and other data traffic. In South Africa the government’s surveillance programme suffered a legal setback when the Constitutional Court found that their mass surveillance programme was unlawful and their targeted surveillance lacked critical due process, oversight, and transparency. Parliament has until 2022 to amend/pass laws addressing these problems. However, with the competing interests of privacy and national security, it is only a matter of time before South Africa’s surveillance regime continues on a legal footing. 

From the private sector comes the other pincer of surveillance – that of surveillance capitalism, the profiling for the purpose of manipulation. Surveillance capitalism is an economic model built on the extraction, exploitation and commodification of data and the use of big data sets and algorithms to predict (and even direct) human behaviour to concentrate and consolidate power in ways that increase economic and social inequality. 

We also see forms of censorship emanating from both government and commercial interests.  Surveillance capitalists control the dominant content platforms (google, facebook, etc). The algorithms that shape their content have a range of social and political biases built in and are designed to maximize  ‘engagement’ by promoting sensationalism. They also takedown content they consider controversial and even block people’s accounts. Governments around the world are extending their existing censorship laws into the digital realm – from filtering specific keywords,  to taking down websites and complete internet shutdowns. In South Africa the Film & Publications Board (the old Aparthied censor) now has a mandate to regulate online content and hate speech legislation is in the pipeline. 

The prospects of ending either state or commercial surveillance and censorship are distant, but not all is lost.

On the legal front citizens around the world are campaigning for freedom of expression and privacy. South Africa has a relatively strong Bill of Rights, legislation, and jurisprudence protecting freedom of expression.  Regarding privacy,  we have the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) in South Africa that established the independent Information Regulator, and the government has been ordered to pass new laws to limit the worst excesses of state surveillance. 

On the technical front data is vulnerable to interception as it travels through the network and we have a range of technologies designed to ensure privacy like anonymous web browsing, secure websites (HTTPS), virtual private networks (VPNs), client-to-client interactions (local networking without use of the internet itself), and other forms of end-to-end encryption. Data is also vulnerable to interception on the equipment where it is stored. Here ownership is key and privacy protecting solutions like 3NWeb, software protocols offering decentralized services designed around the principle of least authority, to combat the monopolization and centralization. Sensitive information can  also be stored on secure servers in Europe and thus covered by the GDPR jurisdiction. 

The proposed Infotech Collective will promote the use of secure software and network solutions, provide secure servers, and contribute to advocacy campaigns to advance online privacy and freedom of expression. 

Network Access

StatsSA reports that 37% of South African households still have no access to the internet while 58.7% with  access use mobile data. South Africa’s telecommunications network is a result of the ANC government’s commitment to a neoliberal growth path and mirrors/reproduces broader racial and gender inequality. 

The majority in South Africa access the internet through four large telecoms corporations dominated by Telkom (a commercialised parastatal) and mobile duopoly of MTN and Vodacom.  While a small suburban minority enjoy access to a range of connectivity options including ADSL (copper wire) and increasingly high speed fibre, those living in townships and outside cities rely almost exclusively on mobile operators. Fibre rollout is being driven by market forces – companies cherry pick wealthy areas to service and neglect the majority living in townships and outside cities. 

Government’s neoliberal response is mostly limited to regulating the private sector to enable more service providers to enter the telecoms ‘market’. The government’s more interventionist SA Connect aimed to deliver widespread broadband access to 90% of the country by 2020 but the 2016 targets have not yet been met. To the extent that these interventions challenge the dominance of MTN/Vodacom/Telkom they represent opportunities for the provision of decommodified services. 

ICASA (the telecoms regulator) licenses small ISPs (Internet Service Providers that can provide internet access on a scale larger than a personal ‘hotspot’) and VMNOs (Virtual Mobile Network Operators that can offer data and voice services on the back of the MTN/Vodacom/CellC networks at wholesale rates). While the duration and cost of securing an ISP or MVNO licenses will be prohibitive in the short term, the InfoTech Collective could partner with existing licence holders. ICASA’s recent regulations on the Limitations of Control and Equity Ownership require ISPs to have 30% ownership from ‘historically disadvantaged groups’ and could offer an opportunity to forge partnership in this regard.

There are also a range of alternatives to privatised telecommunication from publically owned municipal internet, shared open wireless networks, and cooperatively owned community networks right up to publicly owned national networks like the re-nationalised CANTV in Venezuela. While the prospects of decommodifying parastatal Telkom are remote, projects like Zenzeleni in the Eastern Cape have demonstrated the viability of cooperatively owned community networks in South Africa. 

The Infotech Collective will contribute to developing public digital infrastructure by supporting social movements and other progressive community based organisations to develop and maintain self-sufficient and income generating networks taking advantage of the dropping price of DIY networking and making use of mesh networks, fibre backhaul, and on-net servers like nano-servers. 

Cost of Communication

The consumer cost of data is a major barrier to internet access for the majority in South Africa. The 2019 Competition Commission Data Services Market Inquiry found that South African mobile data prices are high by every international comparison and confirmed “anti-poor pricing structures” where wealthier users are more likely to have a fixed line service at home/work and while the majority depend largely on more expensive and slower mobile data. The Commission also confirmed that ‘pre-paid’ data is more expensive (sometimes 4 times more) than ‘post-paid’ data. As only those with jobs and access to credit have access to ‘post-paid’ data contracts, this means the poor are subsidising the more affluent.  

The Covid pandemic has sent CSOs’ digital costs soaring, though it has reduced other costs like travel, accommodation and catering. Community based organisations have a specific challenge, since their activists largely lack decent internet access and have to be sent data and airtime bundles to participate in online events. The provision of such bundles is an ongoing source of stress to everyone involved, especially when they have arbitrary anti-features like short expiration times. There is often no way of knowing whether they have been used as intended. 

There are currently four opportunities to increase access to more affordable (including free) internet access: 

1. Building community networks: People on a local community network can access services and content hosted on local servers at no cost (free) because data never leaves the local infrastructure;
2. Fixed line broadband: Data from ADSL or fibre fixed lines is considerably cheaper than mobile data. A  community network connected to a fixed line can offer full internet access to people on local networks breaking the stranglehold mobile operators hold on communities; 
3. Bulk buying of data: For those still dependent on mobile operators we can reduce costs by leveraging economies of scale. Rather than individual small once-off prepaid data purchases, data can be bought in bulk at lower rates.
4. Zero rating & Reverse Billing: Specific content (webpages) and services (like chat or video conferencing) can be offered at no cost to the end-user. This is not free as data costs will be reverse billed to the content/service provider. 

There are also a number of ongoing policy and regulatory processes that have the potential to lower the cost of communication – most notably the release of spectrum freed up by the migration to digital television. The dominant network operators promise that the release of spectrum will enable them to lower costs. ICASA’s regulations for the new spectrum aim to increase commercial competition, prescribe the zero-rating of public benefit organisations’ mobile content, and an allocation to a newly created wholesale open-access network (WOAN) will give smaller players access to spectrum needed to challenge the cartel. 

User equipment is another cost barrier. Increasingly hardware & software is no longer purchased but is now being rented from corporations. Few software providers offer guaranteed privacy (encryption) and in the worst cases – like Google – software and server space  is offered for ‘free’ in exchange for personal information. People must either pay recurring license/rental fees for software (microsoft, etc), or expose themselves to corporate surveillance. 

The Infotech Collective will promote the adoption of free open source software solutions (like Nextcloud to replace G-Suite or Jitsi to replace Zoom) and maintain servers outside of corporate control. 

Marginalised Voices & the Dominant Media

The South African traditional media landscape is dominated by a handful of corporations, most notably: Naspers – who dominate newspapers and magazines (Media24) and satellite TV (Multichoice) – and the SABC who dominate free to air television and radio (including African language platforms). 

The 1996 Constitution guarantees media freedom  and the media is relatively “free”  from government censorship.  However the highly concentrated nature of ownership and commeraciled business model of the dominant media (including the public broadcaster) has resulted in a largely homogeneous media that tend to focus on concerns of urban and middle-class people at the expense of working-class and unemployed South Africans – the marginalised majority. 

Further, as advertising revenue has moved online media owners have sought to cut costs by downsizing newsrooms and retrenching journalists. This has led to a drop in the quality of journalism as fewer (and less experienced) journalists carry larger workloads and do not have the time to research, grapple with context, or interview sources beyond a small pool of ‘experts’. 

In short, South Africa’s dominant media is ill equipped to serve the information and expression needs of the marginalised majority. As such they cannot enable the inclusive public sphere our  democracy desperately needs to negotiate the many challenges we face. 

The online environment dramatically lowers barriers to entry as anyone can now set up a website and publish with ease. However, the communication system remains dominated by large corporations who have managed to achieve Network Effects – or demand-side economies of scale – whereby they crowd in large groups of users who in turn attract more users. Corporations like Facebook, Google, and in South Africa Naspers/Media24, enjoy an exponentially large share of internet traffic. Publishers of small websites – including NGOs and movements – battle to reach audiences of any scale, often only reading those who already share their concerns or have an active internet in their issues. 

These dominant online media create ‘walled gardens’ where they curate content to keep users on their platforms and attract new users to maximise advertising revenue. Again, the result is a lack of content diversity shaped by profit maximising editorial agendas (now often implemented by untransparent algorithms).

The dominant online business model (driven by the harvesting of personal information to sell targeted advertising) seeks to maximise the time users spend on their site, and sell these ‘eyeballs’ to those paying for exposure without any regard for the information needs of the democracy – or the factual quality of content. The result is a predominance of ‘click bait’ and sensationalist and ‘fake news’ content. 

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