Goals, objectives, & areas of work
Our Open Calls seek to support technology-focused interventions with clear human-centred benefits for those negatively affected by surveillance capitalism. Every project we support, or change we make, starts with this goal in mind. Accordingly, we strive to support efforts that:
Improve the integrity of democracy in our digital age - by intervening directly with governments, press, and other institutions responsible for the trust and health of current democracies.
Enhance digital protections available to individuals - by giving them the power to thwart surveillance capitalism’s ability to pervade and exploit.
Raise awareness on the state of surveillance capitalism - by illuminating threats and opportunities.
Stimulate the growth of virtuous alternatives - by exploring better policy creation and money-making models.
To accomplish our goals, we use our Open Calls to continually:
Distribute more resources - by increasing that which is available and ensuring it is redistributed to as many aligned partners as possible.
Evolve the platform - by better facilitating the exchange of knowledge, funds, and other resources via improving and expanding our Open Call offerings.
Maintain awareness - by creating and making available open opportunities for learning and sharing.
Fortify the field - by further enabling the ecosystem of people, institutions, organisations, projects, and communities to respond and persist.
Grow the network - by ensuring clear protocols exist that can be followed to facilitate healthy expansion and new connections.
Protect the network - by maintaining a productive, enriching, and safe group of esteemed individuals and organisations as Reset partners.
In furtherance of our goals and objectives, Reset conducts and supports projects in the following areas of work:
Policy Change: We work globally to develop and advance a public policy agenda that sets fair rules and standards for Big Tech companies, ensuring their operations better serve democracy. Through direct advocacy with policymakers and grassroots campaigning, we promote new policies that give individuals control over their data, while protecting them from harmful content and online manipulation.
Research + Investigation: We support a network of researchers studying the interplay between democracy and technology, with the aim of informing current policy debates. Through our partners, we are interested in identifying the ways technology is harming democracy and determining how such harms can be reversed. We are also working to help design effective legal and regulatory systems.
Technology: We fund the development of technologies that empower researchers, activists, and consumers to expose and reduce the influence of digital disinformation enabled by online surveillance. We also support the design and implementation of new tools that enable in-depth research, community engagement, and educational insight into digital threats to democracy. Our Open Calls for technology projects and fellowships drive this innovative work.
Public Campaigns: We work with organisations that help educate the general public about the problems caused by digital threats to democracy and mobilise citizens to take action to stop Big Tech's subversion of the internet. Together, we illuminate the risks posed by surveillance capitalism and link our work with other movements beset by the problems in the information market – such as climate change and social justice. We also want to focus on scaling successful experiments in digital literacy and storytelling, including using entertainment to raise awareness about these critical issues.
Litigation: As opportunities arise, we work to pursue litigation in venues such as the EU and UK where new rules on collective redress allow US-style class action lawsuits to test the powers of Big Tech platforms via the assertion of data privacy, consumer protection, and human rights claims.
