WEASA – the final days

Wednesday focused on a completely new topic: free speech online and social media moderation. We met tech ethicist Matthew Stender and discussed what content should be kept off social media, and what can stay up. This is a difficult question. Participants themselves could not universally agree on what content should stay up and what should be deleted. Discussions at large tech firms, which often have to cater to a global audience that rarely agrees on norms of morality and good taste, must be exponentially harder.

Thursday was the day for our digital security training. We learned how to encrypt. We learned how to communicate securely. We learned about how privacy and authentication work online. And with that session, led by Hagen Lindner, we concluded the formal part of WEASA.

Friday was a much lighter day. We had a series of informal, yet intense, meetings in the morning, to discuss WEASA follow-up projects. And then we followed up with a formal award granting ceremony and a dinner, before bidding each other farewell and starting to think about when our next meeting could take place.