There must be a ground-up investment to re-imagine the technology infrastructures we use to engage in digitalization. The tools through which platforms are currently built rely on a set of information and technologies that only serve the interests of private for-profit platform corporations. Discussions from policymakers, activists, and technologists have marked out three interventions we must engage with if our feminist futures are built with tools, and data that profit the many and not the few.

a. Public data exchanges and common data spaces must be created, governed by the participation of public data creators, to generate public value that all people can benefit from.

The ground norm of ‘no data about us without us’ must serve as a foundational principle guiding data governance practices. These practices can involve data exchanges facilitated and overseen by local government units in collaboration with citizens, which may vary in scale and structure but prioritize inclusivity and citizen participation. Such data-sharing mechanisms should operate within legal frameworks that ensure fair access and usage across different scenarios, including government-to-government, government-to-community, and business-to-government interactions. Particularly in key sectors, public institutions have the authority to require private sector entities to pool high-priority datasets, allowing for the creation of public value from shared data resources.

Additionally, cooperative-owned data infrastructures enable digitalizing cooperatives to benefit from the knowledge of data pooling initiatives within cooperative movements. The approach, based on tenets of democratic governance, allows for negotiation and bargaining, both within and through the cooperatives, ensuring power is not concentrated in the hands of a small handful of board members or people whose central goal is the profit motive. Data pooling is inevitable, but workers' voices and concerns around data sharing and how to store, use, and profit off of data build on questions about lived realities and the intersections that affect how value is built around their data.

b. Public policies must provide the infrastructural base for cooperatives and enterprises. They must enhance data accessibility measures, and support initiatives that digitalize public schemes and initiatives that connect public sectors.

Techno-design strategies rooted in interoperable, open, and commons-based protocols must play a pivotal role in actualizing the right to data accessibility. This approach extends to fostering spaces for digital commoning and innovation, akin to the women's collectives in Kerala that operate digital service centers under the publicly endorsed Akshaya model. Furthermore, we must look to platform commons initiatives emerging in primary sectors that emphasize federation and interconnection.

For example, scalable pilots, such as the Kerala Food Platform, demonstrate the potential to expand and connect various initiatives within the platform commons framework, fostering collaboration and shared benefits across sectors.

c. Feminist infrastructural design that emphasizes attention to the intersectional factors of design and infrastructures which create barriers for marginalized users.

At the heart of the storm of platform capitalism is the infrastructure of the platforms themselves. The administration of the systems is encoded with the profit-motive of platform companies. It is the design of the platforms that discipline workers for the corporation’s profit. In order to build feminist futures, we must reconsider how tech infrastructures can be co-designed according to feminist principles.

“What does it mean for a server to be administered in a collective feminist way? System admins are gatekept, which is especially troubling considering servers run our world right now. The notion of the feminist server is not enmeshed to the capitalist agenda: a feminist server is one which can go down, one which has infrastructure solidarity.”- Padmini Ray Murray, Design Beku

The effective design of platforms must involve several key considerations:

1. The need to accommodate the unique requirements of different sectors and local contexts;
2. the adoption of contextually relevant design principles that empower users, regardless of their digital literacy levels, through intuitive interfaces and workflows;
3. prioritizing the well-being of all ecosystem members over mere efficiency metrics;
4. dismantling barriers to entry and exit from data infrastructures while ensuring transparency regarding data usage;
5. implementing processes for notifying users about changes in engagement terms and algorithmic designs;
6. granting users autonomy in their interactions with intermediaries and technical infrastructures;
7. establishing fair participation and usage policies to lower costs and promote affordability;
8. facilitating network linkages among cooperative federations to enable collaborative product sales rather than relying solely on intermediaries in open networks; and
9. ensuring the representation and inclusion of marginalized groups in membership and decision-making processes across all infrastructure layers.

To realize feminist futures within tech ecosystems, we must champion public data exchanges, embrace cooperative-owned data infrastructures, and design platforms based on feminist principles of inclusivity and transparency. These actions not only democratize data access and usage but also foster collaborative innovation and prioritize the well-being of all stakeholders. Ultimately, our path forward lies in reshaping tech infrastructures to serve the collective interests of diverse communities and advance social equity.

As digitalization becomes inevitable for cooperatives, we must build institutions and governmental-level practices that support such experimentation by safeguarding workers and cooperatives from being captured by large platform corporations.

a. Regulatory governing bodies must build mechanisms to support the cooperative vision.

In order to withstand the monopolizing tendency of large platform corporations, collectives need support through compliance policies and access to digital technologies facilitated by governing bodies. This would ensure that they function and scale in ways that do not mimic the corporate profit-motive structure.

Establishing access to digital technologies involves more than just offering programs to enhance digital literacy among cooperative members, enabling them to navigate and make informed decisions about suitable platforms. It also entails creating repositories of open-source and collectively owned digital technologies, empowering cooperatives to determine how their data is managed. Expert bodies like cooperative ministries should oversee these initiatives to enhance digital access and utilization among cooperatives. Additionally, central and state agencies need to closely monitor how digitalization is reshaping value chains, particularly in sectors like transportation which has been transformed by the introduction of ride-sharing apps. These new regulations should prioritize safeguarding cooperative principles and ensuring equitable value distribution, particularly amidst predatory practices in digital marketplaces. These context-specific regulations and policies must prevent monopolistic platforms from exploiting cooperatives or creating value disparities. Such a comprehensive strategy is essential for fostering the resilience and sustainability of cooperatives in a rapidly evolving economic environment.

Such mechanisms can be built in cooperation with both governing bodies and civil society institutions. The Association-La Coop des Communs is one such example. La Coop des Communs has built an ecosystem of cooperatives to build a space for cooperatives to come together and guide each other through digitalization. Institutional mechanisms from the state, however, must also be enfolded into this ecosystem, ensuring support across scales of work. La Coop des Communs members share cooperative values, imparting them to new members and strengthening them in established coops. Such mechanisms ensure that predatory digital platforms cannot capture cooperatives.

b. Universal Welfare and social security policies must protect against unstable markets, which allow informal workers safety nets and cooperatives space to attempt experiments in models for equitable growth.

The form of labor contracts the platform economy regularly engages workers under is one where the employment benefits are snatched out from employers. Traditional safety nets that came from employment such as medical insurance, pensions, contributions to provident funds, etc., are creatively withheld. In the larger era of neoliberal austerity measures worldwide, government schemes largely do not protect workers as they go through periods of under- and unemployment, or as cooperatives build out new functionalities.

If governments want to support sustainable economies at scale, there must be a re-orientation towards building out safety nets so workers can find and build more sustainable economic futures for themselves, their sectors, and their communities.

c. Efforts must be made to ensure that all people, particularly historically marginalized groups, have access to policies and programs that provide the skills necessary to negotiate their individual and collective digital futures.

Policies and programs aimed at advancing digital societies must focus on fostering civic intelligence and building community trust. This involves ensuring that the right to internet access is not just nominal but meaningful and substantive for all individuals. For example, as part of the Kerala government’s work to engage with digitalization across rural Kerala, the first digitally literate village, Pulampara, was established. The program brought down barriers to internet access, and expanded progress metrics beyond the government's educational focus towards digital literacy, emphasizing long-term engagement. Initiatives were established to help local youth envision a digital future for themselves. This sets the stage for people to substantively envision themselves as being participants in the digital world.

Additionally, there should be a concerted effort to nurture a local democratic ecosystem that prioritizes the voices of marginalized social groups and recognizes the pivotal role of local governments in driving innovations in platform cooperatives. Furthermore, educational curricula should be revamped to create new modes of high-quality learning, enabling every citizen to develop the skills required to navigate their digital futures both individually and collectively.

The rapid growth of gig work in the digital age has brought to light the urgent need for regulatory environments that protect the interests of gig workers.

In response to these challenges, there must be recommendations on appropriate legislative changes made to keep up with our changing tech and policy landscape. However, we must also critically re-examine how current legislation can be realized in new tech environments.

a. Regulatory environments that protect the interests of gig workers.

A compilation of recommendations resulting from discussions during the conference among gig workers’ union leaders, jurists, and activists convening to deliberate on the future of gig workers has underscored the following recommendations regarding the regulation of laws to safeguard gig worker interests:

A robust regulatory framework is imperative to safeguard the rights of gig workers, encompassing several key aspects:

1. Gig workers should be recognized as, at least, semi-skilled workers, and regulations must be in place to ensure they receive minimum wages.
2. These workers must have the freedom to associate, fair wages, decent working conditions, access to social security benefits, occupational safety measures, protection against sexual harassment, algorithmic audits, accountability mechanisms, and rights over their own data.
3. There should be modalities for collective bargaining and official recognition of platform work unions by digital transnational corporations.
4. Both central and state-level legislation, similar to the initiatives undertaken in Rajasthan, and proposed in Karnataka, should be implemented, covering various elements of worker rights and establishing grievance redressal mechanisms. This comprehensive approach is crucial to address the diverse needs and challenges faced by gig workers in the modern digital economy.

b. The deployment of existing regulations and protections in new tech environments.

Utilizing existing regulations and protections in new tech environments is crucial in reigning in dominant transnational digital corporations and fostering spaces for alternative digital economies as new directives and policies struggle to come into existence. For example:

1. Leveraging consumer rights protection creatively can challenge dark patterns that ensnare consumers into predatory profiling.
2. Competition regulation plays a vital role in preventing Big Tech from cannibalizing or capturing non-profit/commons initiatives.
3. Implementing differential compliance thresholds can rectify inequalities in compliance burdens between corporations and cooperatives. This addresses the paradox where corporations often face lighter penalties while collective enterprises bear heavier burdens.

c. Data governance built on the principles of redistributive justice.

Transitioning from the individualistic 'privacy and consent' paradigm to a comprehensive framework is essential to protect the collective rights of vulnerable communities in the data economy. This shift involves ensuring that state-level interventions like Agri Stack, Edu Stack, and Health Stack are not monopolized for private gain, but instead foster public value innovation. Additionally, developing policy frameworks that facilitate public data accessibility for citizen-led social audits and people's science initiatives is crucial for transparency and accountability.

"Consent is thrown about as a solution, but consent falls short. Whether it’s about drafting policy or designing systems, farmers must have a seat at the designing and negotiating table." - Nachiket Udupa, MKSS, on the digital opportunity for agri livelihoods.

Furthermore, in cases where consent for data collection, use, and sharing cannot be freely given, alternative mechanisms such as a voting system, or group arbitration can be considered. This approach retains some organizational powers with workers and moves beyond a simplistic 'yes or no' answer. Emphasizing inclusive decision-making processes enables genuine engagement and addresses concerns about false choices. Ultimately, these measures serve as a starting point for open discussions and the establishment of fair and participatory governance structures.