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 four areas of work:
Policy/Advocacy: We work globally to develop and advance a public policy agenda that sets fair rules and standards for Big Tech companies, ensuring they 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: We support a network of researchers studying the interplay between democracy and technology, with the aim of informing current policy debates. With our partners, we are interested in the ways technology is harming democracy, how this can be reversed and how to design effective legal and regulatory systems.
Technology: We collaborate with those in the technology community focused on doing good. We support the design and implementation of new tools that support in-depth research, activist engagement and educational insight into digital threats to democracy. We plan to have a rolling open call for technology projects and fellowships to drive this work forward and help consumers understand that there are alternative products and services that are designed in the public interest.
Civic Engagement: We work with organisations that help educate the public about the problems caused by digital threats to democracy and the subversion of the internet. In particular, we are focused on scaling successful experiments in digital literacy and storytelling, including using entertainment to raise awareness about the issues.
