Digital Rights, Human Lessons: Insights from South Africa
Western Cape Government Archive, once the Roeland Street Prison—where former detainees shared their stories of defiance and vision.
It was 8am on 20 March 2025, the eve of Human Rights Day in South Africa. A national holiday. A moment for remembrance and reflection. The night before, I’d finished reading The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter, the memoir of Justice Albie Sachs, a man who helped shape post-apartheid South Africa’s Constitution. Now, with Atlantic waves in my ears and a clear Cape Town sky, I was walking toward his home for a breakfast meeting.
Albie, now 90, greeted me between back-to-back appointments. He’s still in demand; still teaching the world, through presence alone, how to turn pain into principle.
And that’s why I came.
To meaningfully regulate social media and counter the harms of misinformation, we must do more than adjust algorithms—we need a rights-based framework rooted in justice, dignity, and lived experience. Listening to those who led human rights movements reminds us: digital governance isn’t just about code. It’s about people, principles, and the power of collective imagination. The conversation with Albie was one of three.
What was the topic?
This journey was part of a broader research initiative funded by the Internet Society, aimed at research that will advance algorithmic literacy and combat misinformation. While our team has traditionally focused on global datasets and comparative surveys, we’ve taken a more expansive approach this time; to learn directly from communities with experience of oppression, surveillance, and democratic transformation.
Recent quantitative research by IUBL found that South Africans, with lower levels of internet connectivity [compared to the UK and US where our other datasets were based] reported:
Higher concern over algorithmic manipulation,
More frequent actions to avoid echo chambers,
And, perhaps most strikingly, greater trust in online social networks than participants from the UK and US (2024).
Why might this be? Could it relate to the younger demographic in our South African sample? Or is it connected to the country’s distinct media environment; where, notably, South Africa now ranks higher than the United States on the World Press Freedom Index?
These patterns raised questions that numbers alone couldn’t answer. That’s one reason why I travelled to South Africa: to bring qualitative insight back to our team. Insight from a country where history is not only remembered, but actively shapes the present; from legal frameworks to public discourse to everyday digital life.
Insights Gained from the visit?
Over the course of one week, I engaged in three conversations that reframed how I think about our work:
Justice Albie Sachs, a former constitutional judge, highlighted how justice can be imaginative. He spoke about “soft vengeance”; as a means to transform pain. Having survived a car bomb and helped shape South Africa’s post-apartheid Constitution, Albie emphasized how we can turn acts of harm into opportunities for healing and growth. Drawing from a life marked by WWII and Apartheid, his advice was clear: we must learn to let go of the rage that can consume us. Anger, he said, can be useful; but only if we channel it. Anger can be energy, he offered, something you can turn into something positive. In thinking about the harms of social media, this lesson feels vital: justice in the digital age must be rooted not just in resistance, but in regeneration.
Zubeida Jaffer, an award-winning journalist and survivor of apartheid-era political imprisonment, emphasized community, values, and the power of narrative. I met her after Iftar in her home that evening; South Africans transitioned because people appreciated they were not fighting white people; they were fighting the apartheid system they were supporting. That ethos, to dismantle oppressive systems that diminish our agency, helped me think about how we might build collective digital resilience. The recommendation was to listen to the grassroots, to consider the potential emergent energy that holds constructive potential to generate momentum that could indeed help tackle mis- and dis-information.
Divine Fuh, Head of Anthropology at the University of Cape Town, works on Pan-African knowledge production and AI, and I discussed the stakes of algorithmic power over dinner. With Africa's population skewing young, there's a growing concern that platforms aren't just reflecting culture but shaping it. Our conversation turned to the fears of state capture, where private enterprise can erode public governance through unchecked algorithmic influence. When influence shifts from democratic institutions to platform logic, it could narrow the futures imagined for and by the next generation.
In tandem with these dialogues, I attended an event at the Western Cape Government Archive, once the Roeland Street Prison, where former detainees shared their stories of defiance and vision (pictured). That a prison has been reimagined as an archive is itself an act of the imagination; reframed, to remember, to serve dignity, and not diminish or colour over a past that is present.
How Have You Used What You Learned?
These conversations reshaped our thinking at IUBL. While our quantitative findings suggested that South Africans showed greater concern for algorithmic manipulation and more proactive avoidance of echo chambers, the qualitative stories gave us the "why."
As a result:
We’re now exploring the potential of a rights-based approach to the design of our digital literacy tools.
Our ongoing research emphasizes co-creation with communities, rather than extraction of data.
We are exploring new ways to make agency visible and actionable for users navigating algorithmic feeds.
Where Next?
This isn’t the end of the conversation. Follow-up online discussions are planned with:
Justice Sachs, to explore constitutional perspectives on digital justice.
Zubeida Jaffer, to understand how storytelling can be used to promote media literacy.
Divine Fuh, to deepen our engagement with African epistemologies of technology.
Final Reflection on the Experience
This trip reminded me that there is history, and then there is the history of the present moment. Speaking with those who fought for freedom taught me that being “against” injustice isn’t enough. You must also be actively “for” justice", articulating what fairness, agency, and inclusion should look like, not just what they aren’t. There are opportunities to learn from those who have transformed justice.
Today’s world is filled with rights-based challenges and issues that impact our citizenry. There are opportunities to learn how to use histories in our present to regain, build, and develop digital agency, digital rights, and the algorithmic literacy needed to transform our thinking into productive energy that enables and enhances online experiences on the path to a more emancipatory online environment.
On my final night, in a taxi heading back to the hotel, I asked the driver—a Somali expat—how he felt about South Africa’s balance between progress and the desire for more. He smiled. “As Mandela said,” he offered, “it’s a long walk to freedom.”
History isn’t just behind us; it’s being made now. Those who fought for justice showed that it’s not enough to oppose injustice; we must define and pursue what justice looks like today. Their lessons offer a guide for reclaiming digital agency, advancing rights, and building the algorithmic literacy needed to shape a more just and inclusive online world.
Alex Krause Matlack, Bryan Boots, PhD, MBA, and I are funded by the Internet Society to advance research into algorithmic literacy and digital rights. One Internet Society value is, “We are bold,” and our team is committed to being unafraid to seek unconventional answers to complex questions.
On behalf of the Internet User Behavior Lab (IUBL)