Bertina Lou
Legal Fellow
From innocent behaviours like hours of mindless online scrolling to falling victim to a data breach, who among us has not heard of, or personally experienced, the negative effects of technology? In a world where staying offline may feel impossible, users are often forced to accept the cost of digital participation over the equally severe social, political, and economic costs of missing out.
The 24th of January marks the International Day of Education under the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)’s 2025 theme of “AI and education: Preserving human agency in a world of automation”. This day presents an opportunity to learn about how to be intentional in how we choose to interact with digital technologies and share our data to experience the benefits of digital participation –in other words, how we can have digital self-determination.
What is “Digital Self-determination” in a World of “Datafication”?
Digital self-determination is a principle inspired by the fundamental concepts of human agency and individual freedom recognised in many international human rights documents, stemming as far back as the landmark 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Though the digital self-determination movement is still in its early days, it has been a thoughtful response to “datafication.”
Datafication refers to the processes transforming human life and activities into quantifiable data from which value can be derived, often for economic profit. It has become an unavoidable consequence of online participation for users in the digital landscapes increasingly designed to facilitate the harvesting of personal data. “Real-time bidding,” for example, is the process that websites and apps with advertising space use to select the targeted ads shown to online users. It entails exposing users’ personal information to thousands of advertisers and data brokers and has been called “the most privacy-invasive surveillance system that you’ve never heard of”.
We can be intentional in how we choose to interact with digital technologies and share our data to experience the benefits of digital participation –in other words, how we can have digital self-determination.
Users’ passive acceptance of the terms and conditions of digital spaces (usually a prerequisite for entry) highlights the power and agency disparities at play, which impede the principles of individual freedom and individual dignity recognised in international law. Under these conditions, individual users struggle for ownership over the three elements comprising their whole online self: their personal data, the data that exists about them, and the narratives and persona they wish to create as part of their digital presence.
How Can We Practice Digital Self-determination?
Fortunately, digital self-determination is a skill that individuals can foster to empower themselves with respect to managing their data in digital spaces. As an initial step, users can guard their data by limiting the information they release to apps, search engines, and social media platforms by using customised privacy settings, private web browsing, and by regularly removing outdated information from the internet.
Users can also maintain the privacy of their data by using end-to-end encrypted messaging, which keeps messages private from everyone, including the messaging service. It is important to select a messaging service that protects not only the data shared between users but also the metadata, since metadata provides information about the data (like details about its creation, transmission, and distribution), which can be linked to personal information. They can also take additional steps, including installing security software and ad blockers to prevent tracking and unauthorised data collection, as well as protecting access to their personal data with password managers and multi-factor authentication. Lastly, users should be informed of their right to data portability in the European Union and elsewhere, which allows them to request and receive personal data about themselves from the data controller to whom they provided the information
Where Can We Learn More About Digital Self-determination?
Digital self-determination is gaining momentum as a way to empower individuals and communities. In Fall of 2024, the United Nations System Chief Executives Board (CEB) noted digital self-determination as a requirement to promote equity in data governance within in its “Proposed Normative Foundations for International Data Governance: Goals and Principles”. Other organisations dedicated to the advancement of digital self-determination include the Swiss Digital Self-Determination Network and the International Network on Digital Self-Determination. Learning about the practice of digital self-determination enables us all to increase control over our data while enjoying the benefits of data sharing, preserving individual dignity and autonomy in digital landscapes.
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