Digital Rights and Inclusion Forum

Date: Tuesday, April 29th, 2025

Time: 3:40 PM – 4:40 PM CAT

Since 2013, the Digital Rights and Inclusion Forum (DRIF), formerly known as the Internet Freedom Forum (IFF), continues to set the tone as a space for discussion on global challenges regarding digital rights and inclusion. DRIF is an important platform where conversations on digital policy in the Global South are shaped, policy directions debated, and partnerships forged for action. DRIF hosts diverse skills and capacities for enhancing digital rights and inclusion on the African continent and beyond. It is a Paradigm Initiative (PIN) flagship platform for communities of practice around privacy, affordable Internet, increasing women’s access to digital tools, Internet shutdowns and similar themes.

Every edition has a special topic that provides an overarching theme to guide discussions and engagements. The forum draws representation from the government, civil society actors, activists, academia, technologists, and the private sector to discuss diverse digital rights and inclusion themes. The forum also affords organisations the opportunity to launch tools, research, publications, platforms, and networks.

Panel: “Improving Equitable Content Moderation in Africa”

Description: People who use social media in languages other than English are routinely subject to inequitable and inconsistent moderation, in part due to the lack of investment in language-specific and regional content moderation particularly in the Majority World. A study conducted by CDT looks into how Western and local companies pursue content moderation in North and East Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia, and South America. In a case study conducted on Kiswahili content moderation, we surface findings about the spread of misinformation and hate speech, the differences in moderation practices of Western social media services vs. local services, and the harsh realities of content moderators which no doubt impacts their well-being and moderation of services.

This panel session will convene moderators, researchers, and civil society experts to highlight findings from the Kiswahili case study, illustrate comparisons and differences from the other case studies published on the state of Maghrebi Arabic and Tamil content moderation systems, and highlight opportunities for future research. Attendees will also leave the session with an understanding of how they can pursue similar research on notoriously opaque processes such as content moderation.

Session Host: Center for Democracy & Technology

CDT Featured Speaker:

• Mona Elswah, Project Fellow, Content Moderation for Languages in the Global South

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