Born into a devout Muslim family in Saudi Arabia, Manal al-Sharif spent her childhood feeling that women were second-class citizens. In his little world, every piece of information he came across was carefully organized, censored in such a way as to crush any spirit of rebellion.
Thanks to the internet, he arrived in his country in 1999, was able to shed these inherited ideas received and understood the oppression under which he lived.
“Under an authoritarian government, you are controlled by fear; you have a lot of questions, but no one will answer them,” he told TechRadar Pro. “It basically describes my childhood in Saudi Arabia. "
“But when the Internet came, my questions were answered. It is the power of technology to break the black box that people live in when they do not have access to information.
Captivated by the Internet and technology in general, al-Sharif continued her studies in computer science, becoming the first Saudi woman to specialize in information security, for which she has considerable talent.
However, while the web is responsible for freeing al-Sharif from his intellectual prison, its relationship with the platforms it spawned is complex. It is torn between respect for the Internet's ability to spread knowledge and connect the farthest corners of the world and a very personal understanding of the hatred it can sow.
The right to drive
While the advent of the internet paved the way for al-Sharif's 'enlightenment', as she describes it, it was social media that gave her the first opportunity to confront authority.
al-Sharif says he understood the power of social media during the Arab Spring, a period in the early 2010s when a series of pro-democracy uprisings took place in the region, including Arabia.
Meanwhile, dissidents have used social media not only to discuss and debate ongoing socio-political issues, but also to organize and coordinate, to maximize the impact of the protests.
“It was interesting how social media gave us a voice,” al-Sharif said. "In a country where your opinions are not welcome, anonymity online has allowed me to challenge my belief system."
“I was able to connect with activists around the world to exchange ideas and have discussions that would never have happened otherwise. Twitter was our virtual civil society, the parliament we never had.
More importantly, the world was paying attention, he said. Very local issues, internationalized by social networks, which have displaced the balance of power in favor of the collective.
Building on this experience and eager to find ways to effect change in his own country, al-Sharif identified an opportunity.
In Saudi Arabia at the time, women were not allowed to drive a motor vehicle. Instead, they had to rely on male companions for transportation, placing significant limits on the freedoms of a divorced person like al-Sharif. In an effort to break the taboo (as there was no real law against this act), al-Sharif took to the streets in his car, capturing the moment using his iPhone.
On YouTube, the video racked up 700,000 views in a matter of days, and more since then. And the Facebook and Twitter accounts created later by al-Sharif became the basis of a community of hundreds of thousands of people under the motto: “Women2Drive”.
Subsequently, the Saudi authorities arrested al-Sharif at his home in the early hours of the morning. The official position: driving like a woman. Before the arrest, al-Sharif was able to warn a friend that the police had gathered outside; tweeted the arrest live, creating a social media storm.
During the nine days that al-Sharif was detained, the right of women to drive in Saudi Arabia became a world story. Apparently, Hillary Clinton learned of the arrest and asked the Saudi Arabian Foreign Ministry to apply pressure.
According to al-Sharif, social media played a role not only in raising awareness of the problem, but also in ensuring his eventual release. Saudi Arabia despises bad publicity, he explained, and social media was the perfect tool to create it.
"It was not just about the right to drive, but about the right to exist," he told us. “Driving was just the most public act of disobedience; it was a priority every time he went out, so it was a useful symbol.
In June 2018, the Saudi monarchy finally lifted the driving ban; a small win for al-Sharif and the Women2Drive movement, although the battle for women's rights in the country continues.
However, social media has not always been a positive force in al-Sharif's life. After her activism began to gain attention and conservative media began to cover the story, she faced a torrent of abuse online from people who thought she had dishonored herself as well as her country.
Due to her newfound notoriety, al-Sharif was also "gently turned down" from her position at the Saudi Aramco oil company, which had supported her desire to work in cybersecurity (which was highly unusual at the time), but did not want to take on the publicity. negative itself.
“It was a very high price to pay, but you lose battles to win wars,” he told us. "If I could go back in time, nothing would have changed."
Although al-Sharif had developed coping mechanisms to deal with criticism and vitriol online, he could not bear the way dictatorial powers began to put together social media platforms.
In fact, al-Sharif deleted all his social profiles in 2018, although that meant cutting the line of communication with his thousands of followers. He did so live on stage during a speech at a European summit in Stockholm, the day after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by the Saudi state.
When people like al-Sharif took to social media to discuss the assassination and launch criticism of the Saudi regime, they were "cleansed" by trolls and bots (known in Saudi Arabia as "flies"). "), he says. These automated accounts were explicitly designed to further the monarchy's agenda, intimidate dissidents and silence any rumors about its role in the Khashoggi assassination.
In the weeks following news of the murder, here are some of the trending hashtags on Twitter in the country (translated from the original Arabic):
- #Kingdom_of_Justice
- #We_Renew_Allegiance_to_King_Salman_and_Mohammed
- #I_am_Saudi_I_Protect_Saudi
Saudi Arabia is also not the only nation accused of abusing robot farms to sow discord, spread disinformation and crush its opponents. For example, it was discovered that Russia had used robots to manipulate voters prior to the 2016 US elections, which resulted in the presidency of Donald Trump. And China has been known to use fake Twitter accounts to spread pro-government messages during recent protests in Hong Kong and at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
"I went from being someone who completely believed in social media to someone who was horrified by it," al-Sharif said. “During this period, I felt very desperate. Suddenly we had lost a platform that had given us a voice.
“The same tools that we use to free ourselves are now used for oppression. It was a profound discovery.
Where do we go from here?
Life after social media is calmer for al-Sharif, especially now that he lives in Australia in self-imposed exile. She says she has no contact with Saudi Arabia since he resigned (although he came back to get his Saudi driver's license), but is otherwise happy to reflect.
Despite his views on the companies that run the world's largest social media and internet platforms, al-Sharif remains optimistic about the prospects that the company may find a way to harness its advantages and control its destructive potential.
After leaving his position as CISO at the University of New South Wales, he recently dedicated himself to a new project: Ethical Technologists Society, an organization he founded to raise awareness of digital rights violations. He has also started a podcast, called Tech4Evil, in which he discusses abuse of centralized power, surveillance capitalism, data privacy, and other related topics.
When asked how he would begin to solve problems with current algorithm- and ad-based internet models, al-Sharif explained that problems can only be solved through conversation. She says technologists are guilty of speaking the language of technologists, but now it's important to get the message across to a wider audience.
“At the end of the day, people have to boycott companies that betray their trust. These companies have become what they are thanks to the power of the network”, he tells us. “We don't want to lose the power of technology, but we also don't want people to give up their digital rights for convenience. There is a stable environment."
Although money is limited and his plan is not yet fully developed, al-Sharif and the Ethical Technologists Society will strive to create an "ethical technology index" to help people make informed decisions about what to do next. She envisions such a system could also be used to hold tech companies accountable for the consequences of their actions.
The organization will also promote greater transparency in the sector. al-Sharif has reserved some praise for Twitter, which recently launched a service that highlights all the information requests it receives from governments, and Reddit is doing something similar. But she says these companies need to go further, providing full access to their algorithms for independent audits, in particular...