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Feminist Principles of the Internet
The Feminist Principles of the Internet (FPI) are a set of statements that take a feminist approach to digital rights.
The FPIs were drafted at the Association for Progressive Communications' (APC) first Imagine a Feminist Internet meeting in Malaysia in 2014. They are the result of a collaborative process where 50 activists and advocates for sexual rights, women’s rights, violence against women, and digital rights identified, prioritised, and discussed the most pressing issues for a feminist internet. The Principles are under continuous revision, and since their inception a version 2.0 and an interactive FPI platform have emerged.
Currently there are 17 Principles organised into 5 clusters: Access, Movements, Economy, Expression, and Embodiment. At a feminist pop-up event organised by APC alongside IGF 2019, we heard that a new principle relating to the environment and sustainability is in the pipeline.
Together, the FPIs provide a framework for feminist movements to articulate and explore issues related to technology, and for digital rights movements to apply a feminist perspective.
"We call on all internet stakeholders, including internet users, policy makers and the private sector, to address the issue of online harassment and technology-related violence. The attacks, threats, intimidation and policing experienced by women and queers are real, harmful and alarming, and are part of the broader issue of gender-based violence. It is our collective responsibility to address and end this."
"We support the right to privacy and to full control over personal data and information online at all levels. We reject practices by states and private companies to use data for profit and to manipulate behaviour online. Surveillance is the historical tool of patriarchy, used to control and restrict women’s bodies, speech and activism. We pay equal attention to surveillance practices by individuals, the private sector, the state and non-state actors."
"We call on the need to build an ethics and politics of consent into the culture, design, policies and terms of service of internet platforms. Women’s agency lies in their ability to make informed decisions on what aspects of their public or private lives to share online."
"The internet is a space where social norms are negotiated, performed and imposed, often in an extension of other spaces shaped by patriarchy and heteronormativity. Our struggle for a feminist internet is one that forms part of a continuum of our resistance in other spaces, public, private and in-between."
"We are committed to creating and experimenting with technology, including digital safety and security, and using free/libre and open source software (FLOSS), tools, and platforms. Promoting, disseminating, and sharing knowledge about the use of FLOSS is central to our praxis."
English version of the Feminist Principles of the Internet (pdf)