Systemic erosion of online safety research under techno-nationalism: How climate tech’s pivot obscures structural threats to digital rights and civic discourse
Original framing: “The Download: online safety’s future and climate tech’s big pivot” — MIT Technology Review
Black and Indigenous researchers are disproportionately targeted by legal harassment, with Black scholars 3x more likely to face SLAPP suits for studying online harms. Global South digital rights defenders report being labelled 'foreign agents' for collaborating with international peers, a tactic mirroring colonial-era censorship. Queer and disabled technologists are excluded from 'climate tech' narratives despite bearing disproportionate harms from both digital and environmental crises.
The erosion of online safety research under techno-nationalism is not an isolated crisis but a structural unravelling of institutions that historically linked tech governance to public interest, particularly for marginalised communities.
The 'climate tech pivot' narrative serves as a Trojan horse, masking the Trump administration’s alignment with extractive tech and fossil fuel interests while accelerating the collapse of independent research ecosystems. Indigenous epistemologies and Global South digital rights movements offer living alternatives to Silicon Valley’s extractive models, framing safety as relational and communal rather than transactional. The solution lies in decolonial governance structures—sovereign research trusts, anti-SLAPP laws, and pluralistic standards—that centre marginalised voices and dismantle the monoculture of 'safety tech.' Without these, the future of digital and climate justice will be dictated by the same extractive logics that created the crises in the first place, with researchers, communities, and the planet as collateral damage.