GG26SandBox

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Revision as of 13:01, 27 July 2026 by Sandy (talk | contribs)

JoiGG Agenda SandBox

This page is ONLY to coordinate between TCU and participants leading circles, booths, and workshops. The official agenda of the Global Gathering 2026 can be found here.

PLEASE MAKE SURE TO CHECK OUT your activities description at the bottom..

Sept. 3 Times Sept. 4 Sept. 5 Sept 6
Pre-Registration will run from

16:00 - 20:00

9:00 - 12:00 Satellite Events and Workshops Satellite Events and Workshops Satellite Events and Workshops
9:00 - 12:00 Wellbeing Morning Activities Wellbeing Morning Activities Wellbeing Morning Activities
12:00 - 13:00 Networking Hour Networking Hour Networking Hour
13:00 - 18:00 Circles, Villages, Meetups and Booths Circles, Villages, Meetups and Booths Circles, Villages, Meetups and Booths
18:00 - 21:00 The Drag Show: Valencia Drive Karaoke Extravaganza DJ Boom Boom Boom


September 4

 12:00 - 13:00 Networking Hour

Come to the venue to have lunch and explore our amazing food vendors, while meeting new folks.

In addition, some meetups will be taking place during this time as well. Do you not have to be part of a meetup to join us!

Where Meetup
Venue / xxx Africa Meetup
Venue / xxx Asia Meetup
Venue / xxx Eastern European and Central Caucasus Meetup
Venue / xxx Latin America Meetup
Venue / xxx North America Meetup
Venue / xxx Russia Meetup
Venue / xxx SWANA Meetup
Venue / xxx Western Europe Meetup


Circles and Villages | Sept 4

13:30 - 14:30
15:00 - 16:00
16:30 - 17:30
Circle 1 Researchers Meetup Tech Justice Promenade: Gathering of LGBTQI+ and Allies Digital Transnational Repression: Connecting Across Regions
Circle 2 Journalism Meetup Cross-Borders Storytelling: Device Searches, Metadata, and Collective Preparation Inappropriate Bodies: Sex Workers & Queer People Pushed to the Digital Margins
Circle 3 Policy Advocates Meetup Organizing While Surveilled: Building Technology Workers Actually Control We See, We Archive, We Remember: Preserving Digital Evidence Against Erasure
Circle 4 Participatory Defense Meetup Criminalization Is a Design Condition: Building Most Resilient Tech from the Margins The Future of DSA: A Global Perspective
Circle 5 Influence Operations Investigators Meetup
Circle 6 OSINT in the Open Meetup On the Horizon: AI-enabled Technology and its Gendered Harms
Circle 7 Mobilizing Around Convention 193: The First Global Treaty Establishing Labor Standards for the Platform Economy Creative Refusal: Experimental Artistic Methods to Radically Refuse Surveillance
Circle 8
Offsite Meetups
13:30 - 14:30
15:00 - 16:00
16:30 - 17:30
Calyx Village
Digital Security Security Practioners Meetup Beyond Borders: How Authoritarian States Use Digital Tactics to Target Diaspora and People in Exile Auditing AI on the questions that matter to you: learn a simple, repeatable method for testing how LLMs handle politically contested topics.
Circumvention Tech Technologist Meetup How to Approach Community-Rriven Development Beyond Git Working Around Max: Brainstorming Civil-Society Resistance to Russia's State Messaging App
Spyware Village Spyware Researchers Meetup
Autonomous Infrastructure Leaving Big Tech: From Common Blockers to Collective Solutions How to Design and Build Digital Infrastructure that Works for Your Community
Ecosystem Resilience U.S. Foreign Policy and Human Rights: Impacts, Challenges, and Opportunities How Ops Staff Can Stay Afloat During the Floods
Regional 15 Things We Learned from Auditing 15 Brazilian Media Organizations Advancing Collective Responses to Mis- and Disinformation in the Iran and Palestine Contexts
Queer Village Tech Justice Promenade: Gathering of LGBTQI+ and Allies Inappropriate Bodies: Sex Workers & Queer People Pushed to the Digital Margins
Secure Communications Owning the Graph: Movement-Grade Coordination Without a Company in the Middle Secure Messaging in 2026 and What Comes Next


September 5

 12:00 - 13:00 Networking Hour

Come to the venue to have lunch and explore our amazing food vendors, while meeting new folks.

In addition, some meetups will be taking place during this time as well. Do you not have to be part of a meetup to join us!

Where Meetup
Caribbean + Diaspora Meet Up
South Asian Digital Liberation Meetup
Francophone Africa Meetup

Circles and Villages | Sept 5

Circle 1 Internet Shutdown Contingency Planning Help Desk (+ shutdown circumvention trainer meetup) When the World Moves On: Breaking the Silence After Crackdowns and Elections
Circle 2 Co-Designing Practical AI Bias Detection Tools with Journalists in the Global South Knowing What You're Looking for: AI Slop and OSINT Work in Conflict Zones
Circle 3 Spill the Tea! What Digital Threats Are You Seeing? Backing Up for the Machine? Independent Data Preservation in the Age of AI Scraping
Circle 4
Circle 5
Circle 6 Navigating AI Use and Ethics in CSOs
Circle 7 Algorithmic Harms & Activist Resilience: Lessons from the Netherlands and Spain
Circle 8
Offsite Meetups
13:30 - 14:30
15:00 - 16:00
16:30 - 17:30
Calyx Village
Digital Security Living in the Crosshairs: Operational Survival Under Ubiquitous Surveillance Driving Action From Collective Alerting Starlink Best Practices
Circumvention Tech Strengthening Rapid Response Efforts to Censorship Events Lights in the Tunnel: Co-Creating an Accountability Framework for VPN Transparency Tor Reserved to Be Filled
Spyware Village
Autonomous Infrastructure Exploring Models and Best Practices of Building Sustainable Tech Collective Infrastructure Running and Using Local LLMs With Hardware You Already Own
Ecosystem Resilience Practical Security and Safety Strategies for Events and Community Spaces
Regional Holistic Security for Immigration Rapid Response Work in the US Digital Territory: Rethinking Security for Environmental Defenders in Latin America
Regional
Secure Communications Can Signal Become Phishing-Resistant? What Does a Girl Gotta Do Around Here to Get People to Download the Tool Before the Internet Shuts Down?

September 6

 12:00 - 13:00 Networking Hour

On the first day of the event, we will be featuring Regional Meetups during our networking hour.

Where Meetup

Circles and Villages | Sept 6

Circle 1
Circle 2
Circle 3 Intergenerational Conversation: Resisting Digital Authoritarianism Across Contexts
Circle 4 Secure and Private Design and User Research for Human Rights Technology
Circle 5 Deeply Rooted: Co-Creative and Relational Practices for Safeguarding (Digital) Cultural and Natural Heritage
Circle 6
Circle 7
Circle 8 Reserved.
Offsite Meetups
13:30 - 14:30
15:00 - 16:00
16:30 - 17:30
Calyx Village
Circumvention Tech
Digital Security Games for Digital Rights & Security Education Availability Over Confidentiality: Digital Security Lessons from Ukraine's Blackouts Hands off my stuff! Tactics and strategies against physical device searches
Spyware Village
Autonomous Infrastructure Moderation, Maintenance, and Money: The Care Work of Community-Governed Tech Your Email, Delivered! Lets start a Discussion on Email Compliance and Deliverability
Regional Hackear y Crear: Cesafíos y Estrategias Feministas Para Enfrentar Las Infraestructuras Tecnopolíticas Que Amenazan a las Democracias en América Latina
Regional
Ecosystem Resilience Closing the Loop: Lessons from Sunsetting an Organization
Queer Rights Village

Descriptions

Villages are "all-day hubs" focused on specific topics. They house both Booths and Circles.

Village
Run by
Village Description
Digital Security This is a space for security practitioners and trainers to discuss securing our communities from digital threats from both the ground and the tech
Circle and/or Meetup Title
Description
15 Things We Learned from Auditing 15 Brazilian Media Organizations What happens when 15 newcomers to the SAFETAG auditing methodologies are trained to perform their own assessments and then hit the road to audit 15 independent Brazilian media organisations? Join an implementer, two auditors, and a funder who will share their experience as a starting point for the discussion of what happened when a structured auditor-training model met the messy realities of small, resource-constrained newsrooms. Participants will share their similar experiences using SAFETAG and any best practices or lessons they also picked up along the way.
Algorithmic Harms & Activist Resilience: Lessons from the Netherlands and Spain This circle builds a critical conversation around a new research project that examines how AI-embedded systems in the Netherlands and Spain are actively harming social justice activism, specifically targeting migrant rights, Palestine solidarity, gender justice, anti-racism, and climate work amidst rising far-right polarization. Participants will share and analyze how these algorithmic restrictions may be showing up in their contexts, and collectively workshop potential strategies to counteract them.
Advancing Collective Responses to Mis- and Disinformation in the Iran and Palestine Contexts Mis- and disinformation surrounding the human rights situations in Iran and Palestine continue to shape public understanding, influence policy debates, and affect the work of the civil society. This circle will bring together journalists, researchers, technologists, and advocates, lawyers to discuss shared challenges, identify gaps, and exchange strategies for responding to these information threats. Together, participants will explore opportunities for collaboration and develop ideas for collective action and future coordination.
Auditing AI on the Questions that Matter to You: Learn a Simple, Repeatable Method for Testing How LLMs Handle Politically Contested Topics AI models differ meaningfully in whether they mirror or resist state-aligned framing. In this hands-on Circle, participants run live tests across multiple models and leave with a reproducible audit methodology using AI analysis tool AIdas. The goal is to help participants replicate and extend an AI research methodology in their own contexts.
Availability Over Confidentiality: Digital Security Lessons from Ukraine's Blackouts During Ukraine's long blackouts, supporting journalists and human rights defenders meant constantly looking for compromises between availability and security. Being able to work at all often came first, but security stayed part of every decision, and the work never stopped - we just had to adapt. This Circle shares real, hands-on lessons on backup power, staying online, and the hard choices teams had to make.
Africa Meetup Connect with individuals actively working in the African region. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn from diverse African projects, gain valuable insights, and expand your professional network. This meetup is designed to foster meaningful connections and enrich the Africa digital rights community.
Asia Meetup Connect with individuals actively working in the Asia region. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn from diverse Asian projects, gain valuable insights, and expand your professional network. This meetup is designed to foster meaningful connections and enrich the Asian digital rights community.
Backing Up for the Machine? Independent Data Preservation in the Age of AI Scraping As governments delete public datasets and archives scramble to rescue them, a new tension appears: the data we work hard to preserve becomes training fuel for AI. The Internet Archive is being scraped at scale, Mozilla's Data Collective draws on rescued datasets, and the line between "saving knowledge" and "feeding the machine" blurs. This circle gathers people who hold the problem (organizations whose data is at risk) and people who hold the practice (archivists and infrastructure builders) to compare backup protocols - independent versus institutional - and confront what we are really preserving for, and for whom.
Beyond Borders: How Authoritarian States Use Digital Tactics to Target Diaspora and People in Exile Across Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and beyond, authoritarian governments are using increasingly sophisticated digital tactics to surveil, harass, and discredit activists and organizations operating outside their borders. This Circle draws on documented cases from Belarus, including fake Telegram bots, AI-generated deepfakes, fabricated hack narratives, and financial doxxing, as entry points for a broader cross-regional exchange about how these tactics are evolving and what patterns emerge when you look across different country contexts.
Can Signal Become Phishing-Resistant? Targeted phishing campaigns against journalists, activists, and civil society increasingly abuse legitimate Signal account recovery and device-linking workflows rather than exploiting software vulnerabilities. In this session, we will examine the current threat landscape and explore potential improvements to account security that could significantly reduce the risk of remote account takeover.
Caribbean + Diaspora Meet Up This meetup brings together human rights defenders from the Caribbean and the Caribbean diaspora community. We will discuss how we can create ""digital safety in numbers"" across our region and share examples and stories of our digital rights experience. We will also explore mutual support and collaborative resources.
Co-Designing Practical AI Bias Detection Tools with Journalists in the Global South AI tools are increasingly being used to generate and reshape news content, creating new and urgent challenges for fact checking and bias mitigation, especially during election periods. This Circle will explore how journalists, fact checkers, and technologists can collaboratively design practical tools to detect cultural and contextual bias in AI generated stories, with a focus on supporting election coverage in low resource and multilingual environments. Participants will share experiences from their contexts and give direct input to help shape an early prototype of Bias Lens, an open source fact checking tool being developed through Baraza Media Lab as part of a Mozilla Fellowship.
Closing the Loop: Lessons from Sunsetting an Organization Using our own recent decision to sunset the Center for Digital Resilience as a starting point, this circle will look at what goes into sunsetting an organization. How do you decide it’s time? How do you plan for it? Come with your own questions or experiences: this is meant to be as much a conversation as a case study.
Creative Refusal: Experimental Artistic Methods to Radically Refuse Surveillance This circle brings together people interested in exploring artistic methods to challenge surveillance in public spaces, online, during protests, and in everyday life. Participants will engage with low-tech creative practices, techniques, and visual imagery that can be used to resist surveillance and demand structural transformation. The circle will also raise critical questions about when and why visibility is used to document injury. The conversation draws its starting examples from Queer African communities: Adventures of the Witch's Garden (AWG), a game built from stories of how queer Africans navigate tech surveillance, and Making Space for the Unkind,  a speculative visual novel that interrogates the systems sustaining both digital infrastructures and extractive economies.
Criminalization Is a Design Condition: Building Most Resilient Tech from the Margins Design from the Margins starts from a simple premise: the people most targeted by surveillance, censorship, policing, borders, and platform abuse are the people who can teach us how to design and build safer technology for everyone. Participants will discuss how criminalization can be used as a design condition and the understandings being built into it - turning lived harms and human rights documentation into concrete requirements for surveillance-resistant tools, safer defaults, alternative infrastructure, and tech that serves people, not power.
Cross-Borders Storytelling: Device Searches, Metadata, and Collective Preparation Border crossings can transform phones, laptops and media archives into sources of risk for storytellers and the communities they document, particularly as border authorities in some jurisdictions gain wider powers to inspect digital devices and may seek access to cloud-based data. This Circle seeks to share and compare experiences of device searches and metadata scrutiny across regions, while exploring holistic preparation involving digital, legal, physical, cultural and psychosocial considerations.
Deeply Rooted: Co-Creative and Relational Practices for Safeguarding (Digital) Cultural and Natural Heritage Cultural and natural heritage are under threat from a convergence of crises, and the digital governance frameworks meant to safeguard them often replicate the same extraction and erasure they claim to prevent. This Circle invites participants to co-build a living set of relational governance principles, material that will directly shape an open-access zine on safeguarding digital cultural heritage, currently being developed through an ongoing cross-sectoral collaboration.
Digital Territory: Rethinking Security for Environmental Defenders in Latin America Environmental and territorial rights defenders face digital threats that existing security models weren't built for. This circle brings together frontline knowledge to co-build a situated understanding of digital risk, considering context, organization, and power.
Digital Transnational Repression: Connecting Across Regions This meetup brings together practitioners working on digital transnational repression (TNR) to exchange experiences, compare emerging trends, and strengthen collaboration across regions. While TNR often appears as a series of isolated incidents affecting specific countries or communities, many of these cases reflect common tactics, shared methods, and recurring patterns employed by different states against diaspora and exile communities. Recent exchanges among practitioners highlighted the value of looking beyond individual country contexts. Thus, we hope to do just that, and identify common patterns, exchange practical lessons, compare tactics, and build stronger connections and continued collaborations across networks, regions and organizations.
Driving Action From Collective Alerting Protection providers and security experts often spend their limited capacity urgently translating the latest threats into alerts that are relevant to the diverse communities they serve so they can independently identify and mitigate those threats or seek support when they can't. But, affected individuals often have trouble acting on these safety alerts because they may not understand what they mean, not know whether they apply to them, not grasp the risk level, not know where to get assistance, or lack the time/resources to take the suggested action. This circle will chart a path to a future where threat intelligence is rapidly and easily transformed into a range of alerts that allow diverse at-risk communities make informed security decision. Participants will explore what is necessary to make alerts actionable, identify the parts can/not be adapted and reused across different communities, and explore strategies and tactics for reducing duplication, and better connecting and building on other efforts
Eastern European and Central Caucasus Meetup Connect with individuals actively working in the Eastern European and Central Caucasus region. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn from diverse Eastern European and Central Caucasus projects, gain valuable insights, and expand your professional network. This meetup is designed to foster meaningful connections and enrich the Eastern European and Central Caucasus digital rights community.
Exploring Models and Best Practices of Building Sustainable Tech Collective Infrastructure Participants will explore existing collectives that have lasted the test of time, such as Framasoft, May First, and Riseup, as well as exploring that did not last. Looking at different case studies, we will uncover best practices and lessons learned. We will also imagine what an effective tech collective serving defenders should be like, especially for those working in the most repressive environments.  
Francophone Africa Meetup Connect with individuals actively working in the Francophone African region. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn from diverse Francophone African projects, gain valuable insights, and expand your professional network. This meetup is designed to foster meaningful connections and enrich the Francophone African digital rights community.
Games for Digital Rights & Security Education Calling all practitioners and enthusiasts for interactive and play-based education! In this circle, we'll exchange ideas and lessons learned in creating and facilitating educational games. You're welcome whether you have created your own games, designed creative training tactics, or are just interested in how to elevate digital literacy and raise awareness in fun activities.
Hackear y Crear: Cesafíos y Estrategias Feministas Para Enfrentar Las Infraestructuras Tecnopolíticas Que Amenazan a las Democracias en América Latina Este Circlo busca propiciar un diálogo amplio entre los movimientos feministas y los de defensa de los derechos digitales, con el fin de analizar cómo las infraestructuras tecnopolíticas impulsan nuevas formas de violencia de género facilitada por la tecnología (TFGBV, por sus siglas en inglés) que afectan a movimientos, especialmente en contextos políticos cada vez más hostiles. La discusión partirá de investigaciones recientes de organizaciones feministas y fondos de mujeres de ocho países de América Latina y el Caribe, que formará la base para examinar cómo este tipo de violencia afecta la participación democrática, e identificando características únicas y padrones. Las participantes también explorarán estrategias de cuidado colectivo, resiliencia digital y resistencia frente a estos desafíos.
Holistic Security for Immigration Rapid Response Work in the US Across the US, the drastic increase in immigration enforcement activity has been met with an unprecedented development of hyperlocal rapid-response networks. These folks are doing the frontline work of monitoring, resisting, and documenting. Holistic community safety is essential in these continued rapid-response efforts. This circle will bring together individuals and organizations who are leading these security efforts to identify common challenges, share effective strategies, and coordinate on service delivery.
Hands off my stuff! Tactics and Strategies Against Physical Device Searches An open discussion about the latest tactics and strategies to protect our devices and the data they hold against physical searches. We'll discuss tools, good practices, and threat models like border searches, lost/stolen devices, abusive domestic situations, etc.
How Ops Staff Can Stay Afloat During the Floods Funding cuts, staff layoffs, and ongoing uncertainty are forcing organizations to do more with less. During this circle, participants will share honest struggles with maintaining efficient, resilient operations, and will come away with collectively shared tactics and strategies that have been successful to stay functional, even during high stress periods.
How to Approach Community-Rriven Development Beyond Git Participants will discuss approaches to let software development be driven by users, even those without technical know-how or git knowledge. What can we learn from Community activation/building tools developed in activist circles? How can we maintain bidirectional and value-based community connections?
How to Design and Build Digital Infrastructure that Works for Your Community Communities can own and govern their own digital infrastructure! This Circle is for anyone trying to connect their community to the internet, or build or adapt communication platforms to serve their communities needs. Come hear little-known successes, exchange honest lessons, and identify shared needs to strengthen community-owned infrastructure.
Inappropriate Bodies: Sex Workers & Queer People Pushed to the Digital Margins Surveillance, erasure, and censorship have always been a day-to-day to the sex worker community. In this circle, we invite digital rights activists, moderators, developers, and other sex workers to discuss the impact and the harm of these issues and how we can come together to build an Internet rooted in collective liberation.
Influence Operations Investigators Meetup A space for people who research and track influence operations across different regions to meet, connect, and build trust. Many of us investigate influence operations in relative isolation, often under risk, and rarely get to meet peers facing similar challenges. This meetup is a chance to put faces to names, share where we are working and what we are up against, and lay the groundwork for ongoing cross-regional collaboration that continues well beyond the GG. We especially want to connect investigators from underrepresented regions, including the Global South, where influence operations are often under-documented but increasingly consequential.
Intergenerational Conversation: Resisting Digital Authoritarianism Across Contexts In this Circle, participants will explore how state-sponsored and tech-driven authoritarianism impacts different communities through shared experiences of digital surveillance, harassment, and censorship. We will intentionally bring an intergenerational lens, looking at how tech threats target different age groups, and how youth-led digital tactics can blend with seasoned organizing experience to build stronger collective defenses. Rather than focusing solely on regional differences, participants will identify common patterns and exchange community-led strategies that defenders can immediately adapt to their local realities.
Internet Shutdown Contingency Planning Help Desk (+ shutdown circumvention trainer meetup) Come create an Internet shutdown contingency plan driven by your needs, taking into account your threat model and capabilities. Participants will be introduced to the BRACE (Building Readiness and Circumvention in Emergencies) Framework, which includes a curriculum, methodology, and trainer-ready framework, designed to help CSOs build customized contingency plans for outages. Come make a plan for yourself, or if you're a shutdown circumvention trainer, come to connect with other trainers and talk about shutdown circumvention!
Journalism Meetup Connect with other journalists and media professionals in the digital rights field. This is a fantastic opportunity to foster meaningful connections, share your concerns and seek support, and expand your professional network.
Knowing What You're Looking for: AI Slop and OSINT Work in Conflict Zones How can we maintain the integrity of OSINT work when our processes and, increasingly, our own eyes can betray us? This Circle invites OSINT practitioners across disciplines - journalists, lawyers, digital rights defenders, academics, and beyond - to share their experiences navigating AI-generated content and disinformation in conflict zones, where synthetic media has increasingly been weaponized to distort documentation and accountability efforts. Participants are encouraged to bring examples and case studies for breakout groups, where we'll swap operational strategies for identifying and mitigating AI slop in our work.|
Latin America Meetup Connect with individuals actively working in the Latin America region. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn from diverse Latin American projects, gain valuable insights, and expand your professional network. This meetup is designed to foster meaningful connections and enrich the Latin America digital rights community.
Leaving Big Tech: From Common Blockers to Collective Solutions Making the case for moving away from Big Tech is one thing, but actually doing it is another. In this circle, we'll bring together organisations and individuals at different stages of their transition to share what has worked, what hasn't and what's still getting in the way. Whether you're trying to build internal consensus, in the middle of a technical migration, or already on the other side and looking to support others, this is a space to map out shared challenges and leave with some good next steps.
Lights in the Tunnel: Co-Creating an Accountability Framework for VPN Transparency Participants will discuss and begin drafting a community-informed methodology for assessing VPN transparency and accountability. This includes what the methodology should look like, key policies or practices that it will assess, and the selection of VPN providers that should be evaluated. The Circle aims to strengthen and raise the bar for enforceable standards of platform accountability in the VPN ecosystem.
Living in the Crosshairs: Operational Survival Under Ubiquitous Surveillance When total digital evasion is impossible, how do frontline defenders manage the day-to-day reality of targeted targeting? This highly collaborative Circle moves past standard baseline tools to share hard-won operational strategies, psychological coping mechanisms, and risk-mitigation tactics for working under unlawful state surveillance. We will map out collective cross-regional wisdom on moving from digital paralysis to resilient, ongoing activism.
Mobilizing Around Convention 193: The First Global Treaty Establishing Labor Standards for the Platform Economy This June, the International Labour Organization adopted Convention 193, the first binding global treaty establishing labor standards for the platform economy. The Convention addresses key issues including worker classification, algorithmic transparency, and social protection. While this marks a significant milestone, much work remains to ensure its effective implementation. This Circle will explore key dimensions of the Convention, including digital rights, automated decision-making, worker surveillance, and access to effective remedies. Participants will discuss how these provisions can be translated into national ratification and implementation strategies, as well as identify strategic entry points for advocacy, coalition-building, and stakeholder engagement.
Moderation, Maintenance, and Money: The Care Work of Community-Governed Tech Community-led technology is often built around values like openness, access, privacy, and participation, but keeping it alive requires much more than shared principles. This Circle asks what it really takes to sustain community-governed infrastructure: who moderates harm, who maintains the code, who pays for hosting and security, who makes decisions, and how care work can be recognized before people burn out.
Navigating AI Use and Ethics in CSOs The use of AI tools, specially LLMs, seems unavoidable, almost common sense. But considering all the societal negative effects, from environmental concerns, to privacy, through labor and gender, how can CSO implement guardrails to the use of such tools that align with their strategy and ethics?
North America Meetup Connect with individuals actively working in the North American region. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn from diverse North American projects, gain valuable insights, and expand your professional network. This meetup is designed to foster meaningful connections and enrich the North American digital rights community.
On the Horizon: AI-enabled Technology and its Gendered Harms With the steady increase in AI-powered technologies all around the world, the digital rights landscape is changing and with it so are online harms especially to women and young girls. This circle aims to discuss the impact of AI tools, software and technologies on how women access, use, and take part in online spaces. By leveraging research studies on gendered disinformation from the region, this circle will map our the real harms to communities across Global South through AI-powered technologies and surveillance.
Organizing While Surveilled: Building Technology Workers Actually Control Low-wage and gig workers are among the most surveilled and least data-sovereign people in the tech economy, scored and tracked by management systems they cannot see or contest. This Circle brings digital rights defenders together with people who build organizing technology, to treat worker surveillance as a digital rights problem and discuss what technology workers actually control should look like. Real organizing tools serve as conversation starters as we work toward shared principles and new collaborations.
OSINT in the Open Meetup OSINT practitioners share methods and missions but rarely get to share a room. This meetup is a dedicated space for open-source intelligence professionals to meet, swap stories, and build the kind of relationships that make the work more sustainable and less lonely.
Owning the Graph: Movement-Grade Coordination Without a Company in the Middle Civil society stays on Meta, WhatsApp, and Telegram because they combine private coordination, public discovery, and groups in one place, even though one company owns the graph and holds a shutdown switch. The open alternatives scatter organizing across several apps and often close when their funding ends. This Circle works on one problem: how to keep that combined coordination while removing the single owner, by splitting the stack across open protocols so no server is required. This meetup will define what a movement-grade decentralized social stack actually needs, and will surface the hardest unsolved problems. We will pressure-test a concrete approach (identity and social graph on AT Protocol, private messaging on MLS/RFC 9420, communities on ActivityPub) and turn the discussion into a shared specification any project in this space can build against.
Participatory Defense Meetup This meetup is for people working on participatory defense and advocacy for individuals who have been imprisoned-to share strategies, tactics, and build up a stronger network for defense.
Practical Security and Safety Strategies for Events and Community Spaces Participants will explore and share practical strategies for ensuring the safety and security of events and community spaces, particularly in contexts with limited resources. At a time when gathering together has never been more important, many organizations are navigating shrinking teams, tighter budgets, and increasing demands. This Circle will provide an opportunity to exchange experiences, identify creative approaches, and collectively build knowledge that helps us continue creating spaces where people can come together safely, securely, and confidently.
Policy Advocates Meetup Connect with individuals working at the intersection of policy and digital rights. This event offers a unique opportunity to learn from fellow policy advocates from across the world, and learn about current policy initiatives related to the impact of technology on human rights.
Researchers Meetup Connect with fellow researchers investigating digital rights topics and subjects such as internet freedom, security and technology. Participants will share insights, discuss recent findings, and explore emerging trends in the field. Whether you're a seasoned researcher or new to the field, this meetup provides a supportive environment to enhance your work and impact.
Running and Using Local LLMs With Hardware You Already Own A local LLM (Large Language Model) is an AI model that runs on your own computer or private server instead of sending your prompts to a cloud service like ChatGPT.

Join this Circle to learn how to build and use a local LLM on older hardware—such as a five-year-old gaming desktop—making AI both more private and more sustainable. We'll start by sharing our setups (if you have one), including hardware specifications, what works well, what doesn't, and how we use local LLMs within their limitations. From there, we'll explore practical tips, configurations, and real-world use cases.

This Circle is focused exclusively on local, self-hosted LLMs running on widely available consumer hardware. Some discussions will be technical, but no technical expertise is required if you're primarily interested in learning about the capabilities and use cases.

Russia Meetup Connect with individuals actively working in Russia This is a fantastic opportunity to learn from diverse Russian projects, gain valuable insights, and expand your professional network. This meetup is designed to foster meaningful connections and enrich the Russian digital rights community.
Secure and Private Design and User Research for Human Rights Tech Meetup This Circle brings together design and research practitioners to discuss the state of user centered design and user research in the human rights technology and support/training space. Participants will define, discuss, debate and ideate what good and great looks like for users and beneficiaries of human rights technology as heard by designers, user researchers and digital security trainers that work directly with them.
Secure Messaging in 2026 and What Comes next Participants will discuss what secure messaging looks like in 2026-and where it's headed next. We'll explore current trends, emerging gaps, and how evolving privacy technologies and federated protocols are reshaping the landscape. This session invites input from developers, advocates, and end users alike to help define the future of secure, user-centered communication. Come share your insights and help us imagine what comes next.
Security Practioners Meetup Meet security practioners from around the world - from cybersecurity professionals conducting audits to digital security trainers. Whether you’re looking to share your expertise, learn from others, or expand your professional network, this Circle is a great place to learn about new developments, and find opportunities for collaboration.
Spill the Tea! What Digital Threats Are You Seeing? Come share what digital threats you are seeing right now? What feels new, what keeps coming back, and what patterns are showing up across regions? This circle is a relaxed space to compare notes on digital threats and attacks in different communities and contexts. Activists can share what they are experiencing or hearing from others, while digital security supporters and trainers can share patterns they notice through support work. Together, we will explore how to make these observations useful for HRDs, and exchange practical strategies for facing these threats in different local contexts.
Starlink Best Practices Facilitators of this Circle have been documenting the threat model, risks, and mitigations around the use of Starlink without detection. Come hear about what they have documented, share any lessons you have learned, and collectively discuss risks or mitigations.
Strengthening Rapid Response Efforts to Censorship Events Join this session to discuss challenges, needs, and ideas for strengthening global collaboration on rapid response to emerging censorship events around the world. Participants will also learn about OONI's tools and methods for censorship rapid response.
South Asian Digital Liberation Meetup This meetup brings together human rights defenders from South Asia to connect, exchange experiences, strengthen networks, and explore collaborative strategies for advancing digital rights, accountability, and justice across the region and beyond. Participants will also discuss and strategize around the region's unique digital landscape - as one of the largest markets for global digital platforms, where some of the egregious cases of digital violence have taken place (disinformation, hate speech, and online extremism). Together, participants will share insights and identify opportunities for collective action.
Spyware Researchers Meetup
Strategies for the Security and Safety of Community Spaces
SWANA Meetup Connect with individuals actively working in the SWANA region. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn from diverse SWANA projects, gain valuable insights, and expand your professional network. This meetup is designed to foster meaningful connections and enrich the SWANA digital rights community.
Tech Justice Promenade: Gathering of LGBTQI+ and allies This meetup provides a strategic space for LGBTQI+ technologists, policymakers, digital rights activists, and allies to connect and build actionable pathways for increasing queer representation in the global tech ecosystem and examining the rapid expansion of Artificial intelligence. strategising on how our communities can move from passive consumers of these technologies to critical operators who can shape its future and counter algorithmic bias.
Technologist Meetup Meet technologists from across the world who are working in digital rights, or in other public interest technology areas. Whether you’re looking to share your expertise, learn from others, or expand your professional network, this Circle is a great place to learn about new developments, and find opportunities for collaboration.
The Future of DSA: A Global Perspective This circle is designed for current and prospective DSA Human Rights Alliance members to discuss pressing issues in platform regulation at the EU level, the regulatory implications of EU regulation beyond its borders, and how broader regional perspectives can be incorporated into Alliance's activities. Building on the Principles for a Human-Rights Centered Application of the DSA: A Global Perspective, published earlier this year, participants will strategize on advocacy approaches to maximize the impact of the Principles and to envision the Alliance's future in the shrinking civil society space.
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U.S. Foreign Policy and Human Rights: Impacts, Challenges, and Opportunities Participants will discuss the dramatic shift of U.S. government foreign policy since 2024 - from the gutting of foreign aid, firing of internet freedom staff, and deepening politicization of human rights policy. The discussion will center on how this shift has impacted human rights defenders around the world, challenges to engaging with the US administration, and potential efforts and opportunities that may still exist through 2028.
Working Around Max: Brainstorming Civil-Society Resistance to Russia's State Messaging App Max is a state-backed messaging and government-services app from Russia's VK Group that became mandatory to pre-install on smartphones sold in Russia from September 2025, and is increasingly required to reach government services there and in Russian-occupied Ukraine. Drawing on InterSecLab's technical analysis of how Max detects and blocks VPNs, collects user data, and monitors in-app behavior, this Circle brings participants together to assess existing circumvention approaches and brainstorm new ones. Whether you are a journalist, lawyer, dissident, queer person, or VPN developer connected to Russia, have friends and family there, or simply want to lend your brainpower to internet freedom, you are welcome.
We See, We Archive, We Remember: Preserving Digital Evidence Against Erasure Participants will discuss how public-interest information can be preserved when states, platforms, or legal systems make evidence disappear. Drawing on archival work from Hong Kong, China, Iran, Palestine, and other contexts, the discussion will focus on censorship, surveillance, transnational repression, platform takedowns, and the preservation of digital evidence of human rights violations. Participants will compare practical approaches to resilient preservation while examining safety, ethics, verification, access, and long-term stewardship.
When the World Moves On: Breaking the Silence After Crackdowns and Elections The circle brings together participants to explore why "post-crisis silence" happens after elections, and collectively identify ways to sustain documentation, communication, and action beyond peak moments of repression. It is in these quiet periods after the crisis that evidence is lost, accountability weakens, and cycles of abuse are allowed to repeat. Strengthening our ability to act after crisis moments is critical to building resilient movements and ensuring that violations are not forgotten.
What Does a Girl Gotta Do Around Here to Get People to Download the Tool Before the Internet Shuts Down? Okay, seriously though - We've been asking communities around the world for the past one year what they need when the internet shuts down, and one of the biggest challenges, no surprise, is adoption. So come, contribute your perspective, and jam with us on creative solutions to overcome common adoption challenges together xD
Western Europe Meetup Connect with individuals actively working in the Western European region. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn about different projects, gain valuable insights, and expand your professional network. This meetup is designed to foster meaningful connections and enrich the Western European digital rights community.
Your Email, Delivered! Lets start a Discussion on Email Compliance and Deliverability Newsletters, campaign updates, and calls to action: many individuals and organizations in the digital rights space need their email delivered in order to reach their goals. There are many-technical and non-technical-mechanisms that affect the "deliverability" of your email. We'll discuss non-technical strategies and explain what SPF, DKIM, DMARC, BIMI, TLS-RTP, and MTA-STS can do for non-profits, activists, freelancers and solopreneurs. Access to some of these technologies is prohibitively expensive. Can we count on your support to advocate for cheaper access to the most cutting edge email standards?
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