Regardless of the angle or sector that anchors our social change work, the information ecosystem is a universal tool for sharing and advancing progress. How do we mitigate growing misinformation and cultivate an ecosystem that’s fair, accurate, and community-centered?
At the 2024 Skoll World Forum, a group of innovators discussed potential solutions for reimagining the information ecosystem. They explored alternative models like trusts, cooperatives, and community-based nodal networks, along with the significance of owning and operating media platforms with a mission-first approach. Panelists encouraged collaboration, collective efforts, and a shift from a colonial approach to funding. They also expressed the urgency to protect and defend legacy media and called for radical imagination in shaping the future of AI and big tech.
Watch the full session and read the transcript below to learn more from J. Bob Alotta, senior vice president of global programs for Mozilla; Andrea Ixchíu, coordinator at Hackeo Cultural; Judy Kibinge, founder and creative & executive director for Docubox – The East African Documentary Film Fund; Nishant Lalwani, CEO at International Fund for Public Interest Media; Stephanie Valencia, co-founder & president at EquisLabs; Beadie Finzi, co-founder and co-director at Doc Society, and Megha Agrawal Sood, co-director at Doc Society.
Transcript from “SoapBox for the Future of the Information Ecosystem,” filmed on April 10, 2024 at the Skoll World Forum:
Megha Agrawal Sood: I am Megha Sood.
Beadie Finzi: And I’m Beadie Finzi and together we are two of the five Directors of Doc Society. For those that don’t know us, Doc Society are a global team based across Europe, Africa, the Americas, Australia and we have been dedicated these past 20 years to supporting independent Storytellers, independent Filmmakers. Our preoccupation goes beyond the right of artists to tell their stories to the right of citizens to access those stories and that is the ground zero that we are in now. Our challenge, our pledge now, is to help to strengthen the global media ecosystem that we need to keep citizens engaged, informed, and participating.
Megha Agrawal Sood: We believe that to deal with the climate crisis and to realize the just transition, the world needs more equity, more morality, and more just democracies. We need a negotiation of a new type of social contact between people and the state, one that can lead to a more abundant future for all. That is why we at Doc Society are centering all that we’ve learned in cultural strategy over the last two decades and to help address two really critical and interdependent issues, the crisis both in climate and in democracy.
Beadie Finzi: So we’re laser focused on the question, “What are the kinds of narratives needed in this age of democratic climactic economic poly crisis?” What are the narratives we need to engage and inspire citizens? For this is the domain of storytellers and artists, they are world builders. They can help all of us imagine a more just, more equitable societies.
Megha Agrawal Sood: But we know it’s not enough just to help make the work, we have to ensure that citizens can actually access and distinguish truthful narratives through the blizzard of signals. So that is why we are raising the alarm on the critical condition of the information ecosystem, which we define as, all the structures and entities related to the flow of information as well as the information itself. And this is now an ecosystem that’s becoming so polluted that citizens struggle to make informed decisions.
Beadie Finzi: Tom Brooks, Executive Director, the GOCC, reflected at our first Democracy Lab. How we think about information ecosystems in the 21st century will be decisive in terms of the outcomes that we see, not just on climate, but on every single social issue around immigration, human rights, women’s rights, and identity. All of these issues will be shaped by society’s ability to have a conversation. That space is where society thinks and if it is completely polluted by specific angles and driven towards the extremes, society becomes incapable of collective thought and therefore it becomes incapable of collective action at exactly the time when we need it most.
Megha Agrawal Sood: So what are we going to do about it? I think we need nothing short than a revolution. The imagining of an information ecosystem fit for the 21st century. So maybe that means that we have to dismantle some structures, maybe we could design some brand-new ones. Could we imagine entirely new platforms that are secure and resilient, free to all citizens anywhere in spite of national censorship, portals that center pluralism as guiding principles designed with very different kinds of algorithms that do not repeat polarizing patterns of behavior. Perhaps new types of ownership models. What if citizens were actually the co-creators and the stakeholders?
Beadie Finzi: What if, indeed. With this session and many others that Doc Society is facilitating around the world, we’re just trying to unlock some creative and courageous imagination. We must keep media in the public interest being made and flowing and accessible, that is the charge, no less. This is the space, this is the only space, the critical space for pluralistic dialogue that fosters informed citizenry.
Megha Agrawal Sood: So that was a lot of context setting for me and Beadie and I promise that’s the most you’ll probably hear from us. We know that we lured you all here this early Friday morning with a promise of a lively, imaginative, bold solutions-oriented session. So how’s it going to work? We have invited five incredible thinkers and doers and innovators to paint us a picture from 2035 to conjure a vision of how we succeeded, how we got everything we wanted. How we succeeded in creating a more robust, a more pluralistic, a decolonized information ecosystem. And then they’re also going to give us the first clues of how we got there in a three-minute SoapBox.
Beadie Finzi: We actually do usually have a SoapBox that speakers can stand up on, but we don’t today because my grandma– We have– We normally use my grandma’s old wooden like an apple box. But at this point…
Megha Agrawal Sood: It’s not safe.
Beadie Finzi: It’s not safe, yeah. Objectively not safe. So I bought a couple of new things for us to try out today. One is, this is apparently, I mean I got it on eBay so I’m not sure if it’s reputable, but this is apparently a vintage 1960s children’s stool and it’s got a great kind of moniker on it. This useful stool is just a dandy to reach for things that are not handy. I think there’s a metaphor in there. So we are inviting our speakers to step onto that and if they want to go higher and maybe tunnel the kind of stairway to heaven type vibes.
Megha Agrawal Sood: Jess is so nervous; do you hear her laughing nervously? She’s thinking about insurance.
Beadie Finzi: She’s thinking about it. Well, she might. So I think this is probably more 19th century vintage ladder. I have been up and down it few times. So if our speakers feel mood, we’re encouraging them literally to kind of step up and reach for their visions of the future that way.
Megha Agrawal Sood: And because it’s 2035, we also have a space helmet. I have not tried to put my head in it yet ’cause, you know, hair. But Beadie has and she says it fits.
Beadie Finzi: And I’ve got less hair than you. It does fit just.
Megha Agrawal Sood: It does. So that’s also an option-
Beadie Finzi: If you want it.
Megha Agrawal Sood: So in terms of flow of the session, after all of our amazing speakers have given their visions, we’re going to turn to you, amazing Skoll Community, to hear really what resonated with you. Do you have some ideas that you would like to build upon? And then ask our panel of experts how we can get there a little more quickly to a better tomorrow. How does that sound?
Beadie Finzi: I know you’ve been skulking the bios, but we have five extraordinary time travelers who signed up to help us to transport us to 2035. You’re going to meet them all in a minute, but just like a little heads up, these are the five extraordinary humans. Stephanie Valencia is based in New Mexico, founder of EquisLabs, an entrepreneur who is curious about the innovative ways to engage and activate Latino voters across the US. We also have the remarkable, the amazing, Andrea Ixchíu Hernandez based in Mexico who works across the Americas. A Maya K’iche’ woman, a journalist, land protector, human rights activist, culture hacker who loves to build insurrectionary, open-source narratives to defend life and territory all while dismantling systems of oppression.
Andrea Ixchíu: One name at time.
Beadie Finzi: Sister, sister, and we love you.
Megha Agrawal Sood: We also have the amazing Bob Alotta, based in Brooklyn, New York is with Mozilla Foundation where they are developing programs to shift power back to people instead of big tech. Just that, just that whole thing. We have Judy Kibinge based in Nairobi, Kenya, and works across East Africa. She’s the Trailblazer behind Docubox, which is dedicated to supporting independent filmmakers with production funds, training and mentorship. And we have Nishant Lalwani based in London and leads the Innovative International Fund for Public Interest Media moving resources to independent media organizations in the global majority. Beadie, I feel like we just announced like the NBA All Star lineup.
Beadie Finzi: Yeah, basically.
Megha Agrawal Sood: It’s pretty amazing.
Beadie Finzi: It’s pretty amazing. So guys, we’re not joking, we want this to be fully interactive. And so you’ll see a little bit– See some props on your chairs, but I just want a reminder to listen radically. Listen radically with open hearts of mind. It’s Friday morning, we’ve loosened up, even the British people and the Scandinavians in the room surely by now we’re leaning into this kind of like, come on, I want to feel you. And you know, if you hear something that you love, just cheer it. Like shout it out, clap. Like, come on, you know, really. So when these speakers… And for those of you that are less verbal, nonverbal this morning, we all have been drinking a lot this week. On your seats you’ll find these yes/and cards. So this is a little bit of an MO. If you hear something you love, wave your ‘yes’ card, wave it at them. Like let’s try now, come on, put it up there, yes. I love that point.
Megha Agrawal Sood: Little action.
Beadie Finzi: A little action. If you want to build, if you want to pick up that idea and take it forward, flash me ‘and’ and I will bring a mic to you. That’s how this is going to work, all right. So ‘yes,’ I think you are fricking great. I love that point, I totally agree with you and, ‘and’ I have something to build, agreed? Alright, we got this.
Megha Agrawal Sood: Oh my gosh. All right, so I think it’s now time to time travel together. Can I ask everyone to just close your eyes for a few seconds?
Beadie Finzi: Everyone close eyes, let’s let the room settle.
Megha Agrawal Sood: Deep breath in, deep breath out. Friends, open your eyes, it’s April, 2035 and please welcome to the soap boxes of choice, Nishant.
Nishant Lalwani: I’m going to try this.
Unknown 1: Oh, my God.
Nishant Lalwani: So it’s 2035 and the truth is alive. It’s surprising to say but the truth is alive because things weren’t that good in 2024. The UN Secretary General was worried about media extinction, disinformation was on the rise, Gen AI had been invented, and people were equally worried about deep fakes and about cheap fakes. Perhaps worst of all we didn’t value independent journalism. That crucial business of discovering the facts of creating shared truths in society, we didn’t value it.
We said we valued it, but talk is cheap, we didn’t value it. We didn’t put our money where it was needed. Politicians all over the world were talking about how crucial information integrity was for democracy, but they weren’t doing much about it. What did we do when other public goods, let’s say primary educational, vaccines, when they were failing, when the market wouldn’t support them? One, the state stepped in and funded those public goods.
Two, there was regulation in place to ensure that those public goods were accessible to everyone, that they were protected, that they were valued. But what were we doing about journalism? Nothing, no wonder it was dying in 2024. Let me take foreign aid as an example, right? In the global south where journalism economics is at its worst, we were not funding journalism. Just 0.3% of all foreign aid, one third of 1% goes to media and information. Worse, 8% of that one third of 1% actually makes it to the global south. 92% is retained in the global north of our foreign aid. That’s just $40 million a year. As a comparison in 2024, an F-15 bomber cost $93 million and we were spending 40 million on journalism.
Secondly, there was basically no regulation in place to actually ensure that journalism was protected. AI companies were ingesting wholesale the decades of truth and trust created by journalists and were not paying for it. There was no fair value exchange between technology companies and journalists. But let me remind you, it’s 2035 the truth is alive, so what did we do? What did we change? First of all, we massively increased the amount of funding available for journalism from no 0.3% to 1% of foreign aid. Just 1% guys, it’s not that much, but that was an extra billion dollars every year, thank you.
More importantly, rather than spending 8% in the global south, we spent 80%, we trusted media organizations, we gave them core funding so they could invest in their futures so that they could, for example, develop their own AI capabilities to empower journalists, to empower audiences rather than technology once again, widening the gap between the owners of it and the users of it. We invested through the International Fund for Public Interest Media, which is an independent first of its kind multilateral entity to support journalism.
We didn’t allow governments to do this themselves because that’s too political, it’s too complicated, it’s too risky. We channel the money through a multilateral fund, we supported the most innovative, the most important, and the most diverse and representative newsrooms in the global south. Secondly, we put regulation in place to protect journalism. We ensured that AI companies had to use licensing agreements to pay for the content that they were ingesting on an ongoing basis to ground and train their models.
This became a commercial agreement rather than philanthropy or foreign aid. This fixed one of the market failures that we were facing. We ensured that regulation was in place so that those that were profiting from the truth and trust created by journalists were actually paying for it so that journalists could get paid to do their work and that’s why in 2035, the truth is alive, thanks guys.
Megha Agrawal Sood: Let’s keep that rumble going as we welcome up Judy.
Judy Kibinge: Whoa. What year is it?
Crowd: 2035.
Judy Kibinge: I’ve just climbed out of this portal that we invented and I swear to God I’m coming out of 2035 and you’re not going to believe the news that I have to tell you. We’re celebrating the second year in a row of Africa having the world’s fastest growing GDP for the second year running. I see the doubt on your face. You are wondering how I got here. You are doubting, this is a portal, but let me tell you about it.
You heard me, right? Finally, Africa of 2035 is a political and economic union of 54 countries and we opened up our borders for internal trade, we have a single currency. There’s consensus amongst 54 states, we have 40% forest cover. You have to see it, it’s so amazing. It’s so cold here by the way.
In fact, you see this portal that I just climbed through, it was invented by a bunch of Pan-African and Diasporan scientists and I’ll tell you how this happened. When the idea was first mooted, I laughed, I laughed so much I went had a glass of wine. I said, these Afro dreamers, this continent that just dreams too much.
Everybody said a functioning union wouldn’t be possible. There was too much diversity. I mean, in Tanzania alone, there are 120 languages, in Nigeria, my friend, there are 520. So how on earth was this going to happen? This coming together to really become this one space without borders able to do so much? The process would take decades, what happened?
I’ll tell you; it began with a TikTok meme. TikTok has 800 million users which grew to 3 billion after the American ban, they didn’t know what they were about to do. And an army of young, increasingly political conscious young people more than we can imagine got together and a bunch of nerdy 16-year-old African started a meme called, Great Granddaddy, why did they cover us up in 1885?
And that meme spread and spread and it morphed and it morphed and it got civil society thinking, it got governments thinking and it actually got all these people thinking, “We should actually have perhaps a single unified language.” And it was already happening where you guys all are in 2024 and it started much earlier. And suddenly francophone countries were all beginning to teach Kiswahili, there was a single language starting to form and the conversation had started earlier but what really inspired this TikTok movement?
Well, I’ll tell you. In 2025, a group of filmmakers and storytellers and cultural organizers came together and Docubox was one of them actually. And we formed ourselves around a manifesto because we believe that narrative can change the world. And this powerful group of storytellers, filmmakers, TikTokers, you name it, they had one thing in common, they were all Afro dreamers.
They believed that Afro Colombians were cousins with Afro-Brazilians were cousins with Caribbeans were cousins with Cubans, were cousins with Kenyans, were cousins with Nigerians. They were like, yes, we are related and we are 1.5 billion. Why are we all in our corners, all alone, all afraid, we are 1.5 billion.
And that manifesto, I tried to sneak it out of here, but somehow because it’s such a secret and we didn’t want the people of 2024 to know about it I actually had to write it. Is there something under there? I had to write it. And I’m just going to quickly read you some of it because this is the manifesto. You are seeing it 2024 ahead of time but this is the manifesto that made this all happen.
It was a declaration and it said this. It said, we are all African, every last one of us, every last one of us. It said Africa birthed the entire world and humankind has been evolving and reinventing itself ever since. It said our ancestors were the world’s first witnesses to walk it, to see it, to hold it in their hands and to tell stories about it. And when European leaders gathered in balloon to enslave and carve up the continent, the dismantling of our narrative began.
The art of our artifacts were destroyed, our cultural practices were banned and 12.5 brutally abducted and sold into slavery and our sense of self was interrupted. Feel for a minute what that was like. The West grew, Africa shrunk, a continent that doesn’t really know itself, doesn’t know its history struggles to reinvent its future.
So the answer was clear. A continent that didn’t know itself, struggles to reinvent its future. So we had to kind of come together and recreate our narrative and re-understand who we are and we did that in 2025. And these stories have become embedded as– The stories that became embedded at truth were disrupted by reflecting our own realities.
Film, my friends, has the power to shift perspectives, it doesn’t just reflect culture and the world, it influences and changes it. Please destroy this, burn that up, burn that up somebody. So I’ve lost the rest of my–
Megha Agrawal Sood: Here’s your phone.
Judy Kibinge: So very quickly, the last one minute of this story is about to come to its speedy conclusion. So just 10 years after the Afro dreamers gathered on the African equator in this amazing gathering, they began to produce stories and songs and films and a TikTok campaign called, Great Granddaddy, why did they cover us up in 1885? And it spread and it spread in a borderless, powerful, rich Africa United with the diaspora began a new chapter. It’s kind of cold here in Oxford. I’m sorry, I’ve gotta go back, it’s so good over there.
Unknown 2: Yes.
Megha Agrawal Sood: And let’s continue the love for Bob.
Bob Alotta: It’s 2035, so this very dangerous looking thing has projected me here, okay? The magic. I’m not going to die for y’all. That’s just not going to happen. It’s 2035 and you’re walking to the polls. Yes, we still walk. Yes, there are still polls. You’re excited to vote. You have agency and power for the first time in a long time.
You have agency because your opinion wasn’t manipulated by an algorithm in an echo chamber. Right now you control your information ecosystems. They’re decentralized. The algorithms you use to find and sort information are open source. You calibrated them to your wants and needs and the relationship of your needs to others, which in turn are calibrated against historical and scientific facts and a multi-generational algorithmic common good.
Notice I said ecosystems, plural. The days of a single monolithic information ecosystem are over… controlled by a few platforms are over. But how did we get there in just a decade? Well, I could share some 2030s jargon, data abolitionists, mesh network farmers, computational agriculture, but that probably doesn’t mean a whole lot to you yet or I could talk about the seismic impact of the 82 global elections in 2024 and the wake up call that ensued.
We were a world of lazy democracies at best, who greedily refused their own realization until then, but that hasn’t happened yet for y’all either. So let’s talk about a bigger picture. There’s that thing when the masses take over that special thing, it’s done. Like when neighborhoods get talked about in the New York Times, it’s over, gentrification. Or when morning show hosts discovered the lyrical language of Black trans women’s kinship, it’s quickly Columbused.
By 2025 it became clear there was a new cast class system emerging from the co-option and massive non-consensual sweep of unfiltered information replicating the worst systemic harms, including those we thought we’d already laid to rest honestly. But we watched them reemerge like the rollback of rights across many continents until we said no more.
These changes had a lot to do with AI, but probably not in the way you think. We didn’t yell and scream about large language models, which is obviously what you thought was going to happen or fuss over individual lines of python code, nerd. We the people from the neighborhood, the folks who made family in the clubs and on the ballroom floor, the diasporic travelers, the waterkeepers, the grandmothers, the singers of songs passed down from generations, the folks who knew their own names despite colonialism, imperialism, and the centuries old barrage of white supremacist violence found cracks in the sociotechnical bedrock and then widen them.
We found strategic points of disruption in their flawed misnomer intelligence and called forth wisdom. Intelligence can be defined as the ability to think logically, to conceptualize and abstract from a data point constructed reality. Wisdom can be defined as the ability to grasp human nature, which is paradoxical, contradictory, and subject to continual change. The function of intelligence is characterized as focusing on questions of how to do and accomplish necessary life supporting tasks. The function of wisdom is characterized as provoking the individual to consider the consequences of their actions both to self and their effects on others.
We tapped into collective power. Training in AI model is pretty easy when communities and cities decide to pool resources and instead of generating billions of dollars for select shareholders, these public models generate value for billions of people. By the way, the energy for this public computing is net zero. Solar powered servers have their moment in 2029.
So we pioneered more thoughtful data sets in smaller language models. We all consented to what goes in and what doesn’t. We have more intimate control of our data and the result is intimate applications, AI that can solve real specific problems. It’s funny, the way AI evolved was the inverse of how the web evolved. First, the web was open and then it was closed. We went from Linux and Apache to walled gardens and proprietary everything, from the wisdom of open to the myopia of closed.
But first AI was closed and then it was open. We went from Microsoft and Open AI, proper noun to a Luther AI and open AI common noun, from the myopia of closed to the wisdom of open wisdom. We made wisdom a necessary building block of AI, generational wisdom, ancestral wisdom, collective wisdom, the wisdom of experience. Wisdom replaced the old AI building blocks and of extraction and exploitation.
We changed AI strategically, patiently, necessarily. Many small cracks, many small revolutions that eventually broke open AI. And in 2035, our information ecosystems are just one of the many prizes.
Megha Agrawal Sood: Speaking of wisdom, let’s give another warm welcome to Andrea.
Andrea Ixchíu: I have a message from the futures. I am a land defender in exile because of Guatemala and state and extractive industries. Since the age of nine I had been a communicator and a troublemaker. I have done film working, radio, TV, a lot of memes, but now I’m also learning the Mayan tradition of time counting.
Today is the 5,152 year on the long Mayan count of time. And today’s energy is the energy of the T, the energy of justice, the power of change. 10 years forward, the energy of the wind, thunder and the power of community will allow me to travel back in time to be here with you all today.
I have a message from that future. Indigenous resistance will continue despite and after 542 years after Western colonization, we will still be alive. In the middle of systems collapses, climate crisis, massive displacement, water shortage, our words will resonate in your mind and your heart. Indigenous futures don’t want to be colonized, don’t want to be saved.
In 10 years the occupation war still continues, but you’ll no longer support it quietly. After so many attempts to reform capitalism, you have understood that system change means resistive, extractive futures. You have understood that your responsibility is proportional to your privileges.
I time traveled to deliver a message. In in 2021, we begun a school named Seeds of Ancestral Future, a network of Indigenous land defenders and co-creating narratives to defend the mother earth. We are sharing narratives for system change with the children in our communities, on our Native languages because that’s the only way that we can decolonize our dreams and our desires.
In 10 years from now, we will be in a ceremony. We will be honoring the fire, the earth, the wind, and the water that keep us alive. The people in this room in 10 years will finally understand that no change in the world is possible unless we stop the echo side and the ongoing genocides. People will know that system change means defending what is sacred, what sustains us.
In 10 years from now the Seeds of Ancestral Futures will be the experts in this room, not only me. And they will explain in the many 4,000 Indigenous languages why time travel is possible because time is cyclical just as life. They will explain that land back is our collective action and back to the land is our ceremony to return to the knowledge of the earth.
This is a message from the ancient futures. There will be hope, oh yes, because life will be our common sense and that everyone will know that the fight for mother land and mother earth is the mother of all the fights. I am coming back into my future. In 10 years, I will not be longer in exile. I’ll be back in my community with my family, my forest and my territory.
Megha Agrawal Sood: And our last time traveler for today, Stephanie.
Stephanie Valencia: This is my own SoapBox. So I will not be standing on that because in 2035 I do not want to have a broken hip or soreness from a broken hip. If you don’t know who that was that just played, he had more streams than Taylor Swift on YouTube in 2023. He is on the cover of this month’s Rolling Stone and his name is Peso Pluma.
When we think about changing information ecosystems in 2035 in the United States, we have to talk about Latinos. Latinos are literally changing the face of the United States of America. We are driving pop growth of the population and the electorate and we’re on our way to be the majority in 2050. At Equis, we believe we are the X factor in politics and society for the foreseeable future in the United States.
And when it comes to information ecosystems, there’s been a lot of talk about Spanish language information. Latinos are not stupid. We are over consuming information in online spaces where disinformation is prevalent, saturated, and often going unchecked by platforms. For example, nearly half of all US Latinos are consuming news and information as their primary source from YouTube.
Bad Bunny, who knows Bad Bunny here, please? Released his most recent album on WhatsApp for a reason. Most of the world’s Latinos use WhatsApp regularly. 25% of Spanish dominant Latinos are using it as a primary source of their news and information. Shared information on WhatsApp knows no borders.
And in a recent study from Nielsen, Mexican regional radio stations in the United States are the best way to reach swing voters this election cycle, not just Latino swing voters, but all swing voters because Latinos are swing voters and swing voters are Latino.
The truth is, we can view these platforms as a place of risk and uncertainty and challenge, which of course they are. But to be clear, social media platforms need to be doing a lot more to be treating Spanish language disinformation with the same equity as they are in English. But we know that culture and media eat politics for breakfast. We can and should use those platforms and forces for good to change stories and narratives and perceptions for good, to change how we see ourselves for good.
We know that Latinos are not a monolith. That is our tagline at Equis. There is great nuance to understanding this powerful block in the United States. Yet there is one thing we know for sure, in a world where Latinos by their sheer number should be a powerful block, we still feel like we don’t belong.
Whether you’re a first-generation immigrant or 13th generation like my family, we feel like we are guests in our own country because that has been what has been told to us. At Equis we call this the guest complex. When you are a guest in somebody else’s house, you don’t sit down without permission, let alone move the furniture. And if we don’t feel like we belong, we aren’t going to feel like we can fully participate in all aspects of civic life.
50% of US Latinos choose to stay home every election cycle. The question becomes, how do we use stories and media platforms like YouTube and radio to change the story about ourselves to ourselves so that we can change our own sense of influence, a shared identity and a sense of belonging so that we no longer feel like a guest in our own country.
That is when we believe leaders and systems will feel accountable to us, when we will be seen, when we will be heard, and when we believe we fully belong. That is true power.
Megha Agrawal Sood: All right. Can we give additional love for all of our amazing space travelers? They were– The soap boxes were a little longer than three minutes, but I think it was worth it.
Beadie Finzi: She is such a pedantic timekeeper.
Megha Agrawal Sood: I’m going to ask all of our speakers to come up to the chairs actually as we transition to start hearing-
Beadie Finzi: From you. So here’s the thing, we’re going to go to a Q&A in a minute. So I want you to think now, not questions you have, but builds. What are some of the things that you just heard in the last 20 minutes which have just slightly taken the lid, you know, the lid off the top of your heads. What is exciting you? What do you want to build on? Who’s got a few responses for me, it can be affirmative, it can be just hell, yes can I build that with you, right? It can be an offer, an invitation.
Unknown Speaker 3: I was really inspired by the shift from the wisdom of the open to the myopia of the close and then what it looks like to transform that back to the wisdom of the open and what that could mean for not just Bob and technologists but everybody else.
Beadie Finzi: Brilliant, brilliant. Come on some more hands please.
Unknown Speaker 4: Wow. Thank you so much. But I am just so thrilled in 2035 because the children are so excited by this prospect of time travel. Their imagination is just keeping them alive. No mental health challenges now. No suicides. They are just looking forward to it.
Beadie Finzi: Beautiful.
Unknown Speaker 5: I was just really inspired about the idea of our ancestors teaching us about time travel. I’ve just come back from Australia and I think it’s so relevant there as well and where I come from in Pakistan too. So thanks for sharing that.
Beadie Finzi: I’ve got some hands back here.
Unknown Speaker 6: Hi, yeah. Also, my thanks for everything and I feel like a common thread the last days is that I feel that there are people out there that don’t share our vision, who are really good at organizing themselves. And I’m just so excited to organize ourselves better because I think what’s happening here, at Skoll, we really, really, really, really need to spread it throughout the entire world.
Beadie Finzi: Couple more hands.
Megha Agrawal Sood: Saw a hand up here. Do you…
Unknown Speaker 7: It’s refreshing to hear an idea and a vision of let’s just have one African language, for example. That’s just not a thing that you would write in a grant report, I think. It’s not a sort of thing that you would put in your five-year plan. And it’s just nice to be exposed to that level of planning and thinking. That’s what I got.
Megha Agrawal Sood: See another build.
Unknown speaker 8: I love hearing about our future where technology is an ally, it’s not the enemy. And we know that we have it within us to build the tech and design it to being bring out the best of our humanity.
Beadie Finzi: One last one, let’s turn it over.
Unknown speaker 9: I’m just so excited at the prospect of being able to control the algorithm that’s feeding me information and to dial it up for hope and love and connection instead of everything else.
Beadie Finzi: Yeah. Over to you, sweetheart.
Megha Agrawal Sood: Dialing it up for hope and love. I love that. So those were some incredible builds, some incredible visions. And I just want to take a moment and open it up to each of you and Jesse, like what’s going on through your minds right now? What did you hear that really resonated? What felt really inspiring? What felt bad shit crazy? Let’s hear it all. Who would like to go first?
Bob Alotta: None of it felt bad shit crazy. I mean that’s actually maybe my biggest takeaway. It felt like such a tremendous yes. In this way that felt– I mean, I believed you 1000%, you know what I mean? I was very clear you were standing exactly where you said you were standing at. Like I feel I’m so down for it. And I think we’re so mired by feelings of defeat and negativity that I don’t– There’s no way that that lends itself to the world that we want to create. And so I think we have to be at a party together for like a really long time.
Stephanie Valencia: And the people that are in this room and here in this time like, are the people doing it? And I think we just walk past each other on the street and maybe don’t fully acknowledge the spaces that we all hold, but like, I believe you’re going to build that and I believe you’re going to build that and I believe you’re going to build that and I believe you’re going to build that and everybody else in this room. And it is just such a font of inspiration to know that the people who are– We are surrounded by for these very precious few days are those people who are building these worlds that we want to see.
Andrea Ixchíu: Yeah. I’m thrilled to think that a very diverse futures is possible. Like and also a future of liberation and collective liberation. A future– And what I was listening from all of you it’s the necessity of futures that are not in positions on our imagination. And I think that’s the biggest takeaway that I had from all you.
Judy Kibinge: I think for me, knowing a little bit about everybody’s work, I mean, these are actually pictures that we– These are real pictures that we have in our minds taken, you know, really pushed to the extreme. And I’m loving the fact that a group like this isn’t being asked, what’s the problem that you’re dealing with in your spaces? Because that elicits a certain thing, but this allowed us to really speak the thing that we are trying to build. And I just wanted to add, just being in a space like Skoll is amazing because crazy as that manifesto dream for instance that I spoke of. I’ve met two people who are doing the same thing.
Megha Agrawal Sood: Already.
Judy Kibinge: In Skoll they’re working on the same thing and I’m sure you all as well have met others who have the same dreams and are advancing the same causes here. So it’s not crazy just in progress, work in progress.
Megha Agrawal Sood: Yeah. How about you Nishant?
Nishant Lalwani: My takeaway was that every vision involved a very significant transfer of power. Very significant shift of power versus today. And that the– I think implicit in all of those theories of change was collective action because I think that’s the only way that collect that transfer of power can happen. But it’s inspiring to see everyone is highlighting that as kind of the pathway.
Megha Agrawal Sood: Yeah, amazing. I think we’re all going to throw a really great party together sometimes. So my first– In 20– I mean now, I don’t think we need to wait. My first question is for Andrea and Bob, when I reflect upon what it’s going to actually take to build a more just, a stronger information ecosystem, Bob, because you said we’re going beyond the monolith, I find myself thinking about trust and leading expert Rachel Botsman had noted this really incredible insight that trust is like energy, it does not get destroyed, it changes form. It’s not a question of whether you trust, it’s where you place your trust. So I’m curious for y’all’s reflections on what do you think it’s going to take to help citizens place their trust in this new information ecosystems that we’re all trying to build towards?
Andrea Ixchíu: Wow. Well, I think naming the things by the name they have. I think when I listen to him to say the truth is alive, the truth is that necessity for people to being told what’s going on in the world with no disguise. So that’s what I meant when I said like, let’s stop the echo side and the genocide that’s actually what’s going on. And sadly in 10 years, I hope we can stop it together, but the climate crisis is showing otherwise. So I think it’s very important to reclaim on that and also to create collective agency for change. And also the necessity of narratives that help us also to understand that the change is possible in a collective action way. Not just these negativity things and also these pessimistic narratives about the future and their armageddonic ones like the possibilities of building something different that relies on all of us.
Megha Agrawal Sood: Thanks, Andrea.
Bob Alotta: I think we have to wake up to the commodification of trust. If we think about even the way we talk about innovation, like it’s complete and utter bullshit to think that innovation is the providence of some white men in Silicon Valley. Innovation is where there’s need, right? That’s the commodification of innovation. That’s where it’s monetized and that’s where power is aggregated with wealth in this very small silo. But the innovation actually lives within us, within communities of color, within people who are willing to bend the gender binary, in Indigenous communities, et cetera. Like that’s who innovates all the time, right. I have to figure out how to make X, Y, Z happen ’cause I don’t have LMNOP.
And so I think that there’s a way that we’ve misplaced our trust in the thing that’s shiny in that regard. And for good reason. I mean, we’re told to do that over and over and over again. And I think that if we can resist that and actually love the innovation in each of us that I’m not– I become less worried of being destabilized by a 19th century SoapBox. But like then I’m not competing with you for that. And then– And it’s in that willingness to stand next to each other, even on shaky ground that trust is built.
Megha Agrawal Sood: Judy and Stephanie, this next one’s for y’all. So as we start to think about designing the infrastructure of public interest media, what are some guiding principles that should really inform this endeavor? What feels absolutely central and necessary to start doing now? And some themes were already brought up, right? In the incredible soap boxes. We heard things about leaning into the complexity of diversity, about wisdom, about shifting power. But I’m curious what else comes to mind that you feel like needs to help inform this build phase?
Judy Kibinge: I think for me it’s and it sounds so simple, but maybe sometimes the answers are really simple. There are just so many things we have in common, but we’ve allowed the media ourselves, our histories, our families to make us feel that we have so many things that are different. So many things that are dividing us. And I feel that when– Somehow when we come together and we just speak about these similarities, it’s like scales fall away from your eyes. I remember, and this is a really city thing I’m going to say.
Megha Agrawal Sood: Please do.
Judy Kibinge: But my parents told me when they were little, they were always being told about the [inaudible – Gorogodis – 48:18] and the [inaudible – Gorogodis – 48:20] were actually West African soldiers and they were kind of told the ‘will come and eat you.’ And it was a very colonial myth put into place to make us really fear West Africans. And [inaudible – Gorogothis – 48:35] meant gold coasts, but mispronounced strangely. And then you start to really understand the sources, the roots of divides. You know, they come from these silly little tales told and then they build and build and build and then you believe you are also absolutely different. And it’s really stripping all that back and going back to really basic things that make up all this information that we decipher and see the world through.
Megha Agrawal Sood: Yeah, yeah.
Stephanie Valencia: So I’m going to go back to one thing that I said, which is the story about ourselves to ourselves. And I think there are a lot of ways to look at that. There’s how we see ourselves as Latinos in the context of the United States of America and a bigger country and where we fit and how we’ve been told we do or do not belong. But there’s also a deep responsibility that we feel around the work we need to do within our own community around issues like racism and colorism that have been reinforced for centuries. Classism, you know, how with even within our own community, we view immigration and migration.
So there’s just a lot of really important, I think, nuanced to different issues that again, have been reinforced for a very long time that we– That cultural platforms and media platforms allow us to help shift. And I don’t think we– I think now and in the future, we have more fully realized the power that these platforms have had to get us to where we are in this moment in time that we’re in, but even just like the underlying perceptions and biases that we hold and how they can also be used to undo them.
And so I think not to say that by 2035 we’re going to undo all of those perceptions with the small network of radio stations that we own, but that is our ultimate goal is how do we end up kind of shaping views and values in a more positive way for a more shared vision of the future where we do identify as being Latinos, but also see ourselves as a greater whole and really close some of those divisions and create this tapestry of the United States that was always intended to be for which we have been told we are not a part, but then we are reclaiming that power of being a part.
Megha Agrawal Sood: Thank you. You know, both of– What you both just shared about is talking about the power of these narratives. And it made me think about actually this earlier this week, the Iris team facilitated this amazing gathering and [inaudible 51:11], Andrea, your colleague, was talking about how these narratives basically construct this concept of a reality that doesn’t actually exist, but we believe in that. And so I really appreciated both of y’all’s reflections on that because it’s showing the negativity of how that leads us there. Nishant, this one’s for you. So arguably unfettered deregulated markets have been a bit of a disaster for lots of things, but also definitely for also the integrity of the information ecosystem. How do you think we can either harness or re-harness the market to serve the public good in this instance? And are there any existing models that we can look to for inspiration?
Nishant Lalwani: Yeah, thank you.
Stephanie Valencia: What’s the answer?
Nishant Lalwani: I’m going to…
Megha Agrawal Sood: Everyone has the questions, I think.
Nishant Lalwani: I’m going to quote Andrea, who was talking about the number of times you tried to reinvent capitalism and how it’s failed as to question the premise of that question. But I think that as I was just referencing in my SoapBox, we are obviously losing important public goods and we’ve seen them die over the last 20, 25 years since the advent of kind of the modern information space. And so some of the things that we are trying to do at least is to try and ensure that that public good is protected and not all of that is about the market because the market has failed and yet reasonable investments in the information ecosystem can be cheap and they can be extremely valuable and they can protect us against much more drastic ills for information and democracy.
So for example, the International Fund of Public Interest Media is sort of based on a global fund for TB, malaria, AIDS or the Gavi being an independent multilateral fund, which isn’t relying on the market, right? Is instead trying to support what the market hasn’t been able to do, which is invest and provide direct core funding to independent media in Latin America and Africa and Asian and Eastern Europe, and to do so through local decision makers who understand the political complexities of where they’re operating. And I think while doing that we also have to try and fix the market failure.
And so there we’re seeing, for example, really interesting national funds for journalism. We just set one up in Sierra Leone. There’s talk of similar projects in South Africa and Brazil and other places as well. And that can actually– The money is one thing, but the decision to collectively support independent media is as important as the money because we’re acknowledging this is something that is vital to trust and to relationships in society and to of course accountability and to climate change and to Covid, you know, accurate information is important to every part of the SDGs. The regulatory piece of course as well is crucial, right?
We’ve had some very, very imperfect regulation in Australia and Canada. News bargaining codes, online news acts, which have excluded small and independent media. They’ve been divisive. They haven’t really done a good job of designating who’s liable to pay and who isn’t for independent media in Australia, for example, LinkedIn was completely excluded from the regulation even though it’s a huge source of news, especially now since the collapse of Twitter. So we need to get better at doing this and if anything, we can’t rely on the market, we have to intervene at this time because the market hasn’t worked.
Megha Agrawal Sood: Yeah.
Beadie Finzi: It’s over to you guys now. This is your chance. We’ve probably got about 10 minutes to ask them your most penetrating difficult questions. What’s on people’s minds? What are you thinking, Kara?
Kara: Hi. Just a brilliant, brilliant discussion so far and I’m just curious what you all think, I’m so struck this week and certainly by your soap boxes and the exercise of thinking into the future that we actually have what we need. What do you think of that?
Megha Agrawal Sood: I just saw one more hand, Fred was– Yeah, can we take that question too and then you guys can choose which one.
Unknown Speaker 10: First of all, fascinating discussion and thank you for that. You know, I live in Minnesota and next month we’ll mark four years since the murder of George Floyd. And if you looked at the protests that followed, it, you would’ve seen incredible allyship. Most of the people marching were not Black Minnesotans, but a real rainbow in a predominantly white crowd. The question I have is how do you sustain allyship? Because I can tell you personally that this wanes over time. We talk about not being a monolith, but having to work together. How do you sustain the energy that comes out of rooms like this after sessions like this?
Beadie Finzi: Thank you. One more over here and then do you want to roll it back?
Megha Agrawal Sood: All right, yeah.
Unknown Speaker 11: My question actually follows on from that. I’m the CEO of a philanthropic foundation looking at a platform around Community Resilience. And it strikes me, and I’m particularly taken by this notion of wisdom, because I see wisdom that Ally is such an extraordinary platform from which to build — Allyship connectivity, spaces of openness to appreciate different perspectives in some ways. So much of this conversation as I try and think about how to make manifest the sorts of futures that you’re talking about, starts from the top, from sort of down, lens down perspective. I’ve been struck recently, I just wonder about whether or not we shouldn’t go back to the wisdom of communities and look what we can construct from the bottom up. I listened to Francis Hagen’s speak recently in Australia about a typography for how we might think about young people’s access to Facebook, but I wonder what a typography of community about new ways of thinking about how community could create the algorithm you mentioned, Bob, and whether that’s another lens into the work.
Megha Agrawal Sood: Yeah. Three amazing questions.
Beadie Finzi: Good luck, chaps.
Megha Agrawal Sood: Bob, do you want to start with this last one and then we’ll go into-
Bob Alotta: Thread a needle there. So when I was talking about the 2035 jargon, I think those are really good ideas. So, and I– So that is one second.
And then sustained allyship has to transcend a state of emergency except we’re always in a state of emergency. So there has to be the consciousness of that and then it has to– Allyship cannot be altruism. So we have to accept interdependence and then the way that we actually build compute to not be one set of servers that literally take up the energy of 130 Americans.
So we know their gluttonous households, a year’s worth of energy to just train one large language model. But we could create mesh computational networks. We actually could say, we could disrupt the presumption of consent. GDPR is great. I pay more attention when I’m in Europe about what my options for consent are, but what if actually you just simply couldn’t, I’ll let you borrow my data and this is what it costs to do so, you don’t make that company, my community makes that.
And so that’s actually just a design, right? And it’s that disruption of who should benefit and if the benefit isn’t just the community, I’m going to stand here and say it’s bad that you got killed. And that the benefit is actually we get to be in shared humanity and we actually get shared computational power and that we don’t have it unless we’re actually sharing and we actually think about data abolition and that not to get a piece of the pie, right?
We could devalue data altogether and then what they’re going do, right? So what if we actually said this has to be in a trust or a cooperative, or this has to be a community-based nodal network and that’s how the system functions in the same way that the system can only function if I understand that the very violence that would cause a white cop to kill George Floyd so brutally took away his humanity as much as it took away his life.
And those are lessons that we’ve been untaught over and over and over again. But they’re still true. And if actually we were like, I refuse and I’m going to break this other system, we would have other options. And I think what we’re seeing now are these, like, we could talk about 2035 because we need it and also, 2024 is such a hot mess, but also that there are fissures in the system and time is cyclical and we are all time.
And so if we don’t bifurcate intelligence into these parcels that are false and that are just a different kind of crop, and we’ve already seen how that works, we could just know better. And I think we could absolutely design for it.
Megha Agrawal Sood: Any additional bills?
Stephanie Valencia: I might take it in a slightly different direction which is a more antiquated, the platform of radio, which we believe at Equis is a super powerful platform. When you look at the listenership of radio, the stat that I cited about Nielsen and who’s actually listening to radio in 2024, terrestrial radio and kind of standard radio in your car is like largely going down except Spanish language radio.
Like it’s continuing a steady increase because so long as the US continues to allow migration, which you know, hopefully will continue for quite some time and not under a future that we don’t want to live in. Yeah, Spanish language radio will continue to grow and be a platform to reach.
I’m going to ask us to go back in time for a second, which is going back to 2006, which if you remember in 2006 was one of the very early iterations of very ugly anti-immigrant criminalization legislation. The law that was passed and Spanish language DJs played a very, very important role to driving out some of the largest pro-immigration protests to counter that legislation that never passed in the US Congress.
So that is the power of not just music and culture but how you use that as a place when you say, do have what we need? I believe we do because we have the platform, it’s how we use the platform. And again, how we use the platform with the message of changing the way we see ourselves in this country to be our own allies and to shape our own sense of our own power in this country.
Again, when that happened, you had hundreds of thousands of Latinos marching in the streets against this piece of legislation and people listened in Congress. You haven’t really seen in the same way that kind of drive that has come from Spanish language media. And so again, that is like where the power exists.
There will always be new technological platforms, there will always be new ways that Latinos are consuming news and information in new ways but I think for the moment, in the moment that we have right now for the next 10 years at least, radio is still going to be a really important part of it because music is such an important part of our culture.
That who I kind of came onto as the walk-on song is probably the second most famous Hispanic artist right now. There’s many other Mexican regional artists that I haven’t even heard of that are just jumping the charts. And so using, again, that as culture to piggyback onto that, to help build and shape people’s views and values is really, really important.
Megha Agrawal Sood: Amazing. Any more and up?
Beadie Finzi: Do you want to jump in? Go on Judy. Come on, come on.
Judy Kibinge: I just want to respond maybe to both Kara and to gentleman who was talking about allyship because I increasingly get the feeling that part of our problem, at least on the continent, is this obsession with wondering what these allies think, wondering what, always looking out, always wondering who’s going to– Who should we listen to? What do the French think? Where is the British this?
And I feel that in this eagerness to just be the favored child, we lose who we are. I read something so shocking the other day that the news that comes out of Paris alone is more than what comes out of the whole African continent. Those are the kind of things and realities that we are dealing with and it has something to do with a lack of we’re almost ashamed to look in or we’ve been taught to be so– We are so fractioned that we don’t understand we are having no imprint. You come to places, if you’re to read who’s attending score and the interest and love around Africa, it’s somehow not making sense when you look at it because it’s all about dictating and trying to be with the allies. What would you like us to do around climate? Sure, yeah, we’ll do that.
No, we do the least to affect climate change and yet you’ve got all these details, make us a film about climate, do this, do that. Yeah, sure. No, I think there’s something that we have to start saying and that is no. And we have to start looking in and wondering why is it that we export everything but produce nothing? Why is it that we aren’t obsessing about our own internal infrastructure? Why is it we send out the coffee, then we take it back and we sip it? Why is it that we are not producing the nuts and bolts and the pins and the toothpicks? And this has so much to do with the fact that we’re so obsessed around keeping our allies happy and we need to be keeping each other in.
Beadie Finzi: I got an ‘and’, can I take that ‘and’? I gotta take that ‘and’.
Unknown Speaker 12: The money makes us compete. As long as we follow the money, we will compete. But if we understand, money will come to us if we walk, the path literally disappears when you are walking, money flows to you. We have the power, we have to walk together, we have to choose each other and just walk.
Judy Kibinge: Yes.
Unknown Speaker 14: Yeah, word.
Judy Kibinge: I’m walking with you.
Megha Agrawal Sood: And rethinking who the allies are…
Judy Kibinge: All of us, we need to rethinking because there is so much kindness, there is so much generosity, there is this need to help, but we need to just say, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, what are we trying to liberate ourselves from and how do we get there? And how do we stop being dazzled by the money and the promise to leaders that we actually– We’re holding the things that we need. Yes, we have everything we need, but not the things with. We have everything we need, but we’re not expressing or really looking and understanding what those things are, it’s ourselves.
Unknown Speaker 15: And what if we viewed it as the trauma response and we start deeply engaging with the trauma and addressing it so that we get to that point where we actually are ourselves.
Beadie Finzi: I want to just pull center something that Stephanie said here, to bring the room back to this. The future of the information ecosystem, we need to unleash radical imagination with the future of AI and big tech but right now to survive this year and probably the next 10 years we need to think urgently about what must be defended, taken back in terms of good old fashioned legacy media too. We have ceded so much of the public square to special interests. And I’m just wondering and then thank you for that and the work that you are doing and exactly that is brilliant and it’s only what others have done very successfully in the last 20 years. So I also just want to see that in the room as we think about the information consistent in the future what do we need to protect and defend right now just to get through as well as what we build. Thoughts, responses, questions for these humans?
Unknown Speaker 15: Well, we’re at Color Congress tracking attacks on our current media ecosystem in the US and it’s coming from Ted Cruz, which is threatening to defund public media, sending cease and desist letters to ITVS for its diversity, equity and inclusion program to this national minority consortia, which are all of our Latino Public Broadcasting, Black Public Media, all these organizations. In the commercial side, Steven Miller is behind organized attacks against all DEI programs in the commercial sector, streaming platforms and things like this. And then we’re also seeing the Fearless Fund case, which is in Georgia, which is attacking Black women, venture capitalists and funding and support for this kind of nonprofit, which is supposedly post affirmative action, this is coming from Edward Bloom’s firm. Essentially everyone is watching that case ’cause if that case proceeds, then that means that essentially all nonprofits are not going to be able to do any kind of racially conscious grant making. So this is a coordinated attack across all areas of our current media ecosystem that we really have to be careful about because I work in the documentary film sector and all of the organizations that we support, which are all POC led and serving documentary organizations are currently at risk.
Unknown Speaker 16: Thank you. So Nishant, I would like to hear from you as you said, money is not the only issue and I think the US give us a good example of that because we had billionaires buying media outlets and these media outlets are still struggling. But we are indeed an industry or an ecosystem that is very much under pressure and when you are under pressure, you have little room to innovate, to experiment, to take risks. So how can we reconcile the fact that we are fighting for survival and I think that the conversation here has been very inspiring in this regard. But then there is everyday life, people are having to cut their staff, they’re having– They don’t know how to pay salaries. So how do you think that in this context that we are so much under pressure from a financial perspective we’ll find room to innovate, to imagine a different outcome for our media outlets. Thanks.
Nishant Lalwani: I’m happy to respond to that.
Beadie Finzi: I mean, you were totally point alert.
Nishant Lalwani: It’s a great question and I think there’s a couple of really important elements. Three really. I mean, first of all, money is necessary but not sufficient. And we need to do all of the things that Bob was saying to ensure that there’s fundamental shift in power in the information ecosystem and the way it’s governed. I think secondly, we cannot expect media organizations to fix the problems which they didn’t create, right? I mean, obviously the platforms and the advertising economy of the internet completely undermined information ecosystems that started more than two decades ago. No one media outlet, regardless of the amount of money they have can fix that. That needs to be a collective effort, needs to be regulated, it needs the transfer of power we were talking about.
And then thirdly, we are seeing many organizations who are struggling because they are struggling to pay salaries and keep reporting month to month. And I work with many journalists, I love working with journalists, however, they do try to put money into stories because every last dollar goes into the story. They don’t have enough money to do that and to innovate and to invest in new technology, to invest in good strategic advice, to invest in even in fundraising properly.
And so that’s why for me that number, the 8% of foreign aid is actually reaching low in middle income countries is shocking. It’s unconscionable that number by the way, is from an OECD Development Assistance Committee Report should be published on May 1st. It’s a very recent number. 8%, I mean, that is the definition of a colonial approach to funding. And so decolonizing that approach, providing core funding, so yes, you can keep the lights on, but you can also pay people well and pay them over time and trust them to develop their approaches and to back their approaches in a way that’s relevant for their organizations. That’s not going to solve the whole problem but that’s again, necessary alongside the system’s work to solve this problem.
Megha Agrawal Sood: I think kind of expanding upon that theme and in our last question for this amazing conversation, you know what’s been so wonderful about all the visions that each one of you laid out is everyone recognizing that it’s already happening, right? There’s bits of it that’s already happening, but we also recognize in order to be able to get there, there are certain things that need to be protected, certain things that may need to be dismantled, certain things that may need to be built, certain need space for that innovation, creation of new ideas and new possibilities to happen. So each of you humored all of us by being space travelers and now I’m going to ask you guys to play another role and that is being of philanthropic advisors. So let’s say you’re in a room of bold, visionary philanthropists and you were providing guidance on where resources should be shifted now today, at scale, what is your recommendation? The last rapid-fire question?
Stephanie Valencia: I can start. My answer is very easy. It is owned and operated platforms. I think as Beadie alluded to, we have seen a network built that are often not just social media platforms, but radio and other media that are networks of disinformation. And so owning and operating and part of the work that we’re doing at Equis and through Latino Media Network is really about, building a network that is mission first and is really putting the community at the center of the mission. Not necessarily profit, not necessarily any other mission but the community. And so owning that platform and inheriting that platform, which we did the largest capital raise of two Latina entrepreneurs two years ago to buy 18 radio stations in 10 different markets, we inherited an audience of what is potentially half of the US Hispanic population, which is a huge and powerful platform, which would’ve in our initial, we call it, one of our moonshots.
So it’s very fitting that we are thinking about space in the future. At Equis we think in moonshots and really big audacious ideas and radio was one. And one of the things we had originally thought we were going to do one by each and build a network over time and found out that Univision was going to be selling these 18 radio stations to a very conservative network that would’ve continued to build out their footprint in reaching this community. And I to think like what would’ve happened ’cause the community would not have been first in their world. And so now we have access to that audience. When I think about how long it would’ve taken us to build what we have now inherited, we have just supercharged our ability to be able to reach that kind. So owned and operated to me is one of the most important tools that we have.
Megha Agrawal Sood: Amazing. Thanks Stephanie. That’s one idea. Who else?
Nishant Lalwani: Can I just say that’s an amazing intervention?
Megha Agrawal Sood: Yeah.
Nishant Lalwani: I mean that kind of capture is happening in so many places outside the US because there isn’t independent or even progressive capital that is doing that. So like massive kudos, that’s an amazing intervention.
Beadie Finzi: What would you spend your money on though, Nishant? Come on. Sorry, you’re advising, you’re now a philanthropic advisor.
Nishant Lalwani: I’m advising.
Beadie Finzi: Come on. Where do you want to spend your dollars?
Nishant Lalwani: So I mean, to Kara’s question, we don’t have what we need. We do not have enough resources. Outside the US you could count the number of journalism funders and philanthropy on one hand that support across regions of the global majority. That’s not enough. And also, they’re operating independently. So I would say that we need way more philanthropic efforts to recognize and develop principles around how to support journalism and we need to do it collectively because that’s where the power lies in doing it together. And if we do that, then other capital will follow ’cause philanthropies are going to be enough, but other capital will follow.
Megha Agrawal Sood: Thank you. How about you Andrea?
Andrea Ixchíu: Yeah, I had been thinking about the necessity of the community-based processes on communication and narratives. It’s very important. And also to allow the diversity of languages to flourish. Something that it’s very important is to end the western monoculture, that’s the only way that the world will change. So we need actually new radical languages and communities empowered by their own languages, their own narratives, and also strengthening their own storytellers because I think it’s very important to empower other visions, other possibilities for the world and futures that we have.
Megha Agrawal Sood: Judy, how about you?
Judy Kibinge: I think for me, I’m really just, I cannot stop circling the fact that we’re 1.2 billion if we include the diaspora, we could be of Afro diaspora and Africans of African descent we could be 1.7 billion. And so I know the answers are only within us. We need to trade with each other, we need to speak with each other, we need to make shit together, we need to create new platforms. And so I would say, dear philanthropists, with your billion dollars, let’s have tea and let’s ask each other what we are trying to achieve. Please don’t keep telling me what I need to achieve. Yeah, I think that’s what I’d say.
Andrea Ixchíu: And I would like to add just one last thing. Something that it’s important that funders and philanthropists understand is that they’re not doing us a favor, it’s assuming the responsibility that who we have and that’s what I meant when I was saying, your responsibility is equal to your privilege. And sharing what you have with the other part of the world that has been colonized it’s a responsibility thing, not philanthropic, good heart, which is okay, but I think addressing the current that wealth comes from colonization. So I think that’s important to see it as a responsibility, not just like they are being good people.
Megha Agrawal Sood: And Bob.
Bob Alotta: I agree. I think we should think about philanthropy as reparations. I think we have to have a long game. They have a long game, they invest in a long game. So I think we have to trust to invest at the site of experience and not the site of commodification. And we just put out something called the AI Funding Principles to try to as like, all these hype around AI started happening it was like, wait, wait, what are you– Wait, hold on.
And so you download that. But the basic tenant is actually to have the fewest restrictions as possible. Think about success over the long term. Allow for a failure. Don’t assume failure’s the end game. And the other thing we don’t do often is and to take bold risks, if you have money make the riskiest bet that you can, but also to fund the projects that they themselves might not we have to document more because fund the projects that they might end, but they might actually invent the thing that could live on in another way and we won’t know it unless we actually kind of document that and share the knowledge that happens inside of these. And that’s actually– We spend so much time and effort in knowledge systems that don’t serve us. And if we did that, I think in the same way as not assuming one source of capital it could actually benefit what we’re trying to do.
Megha Agrawal Sood: Thank you. Beadie, how do we continue this conversation?
Beadie Finzi: Well, I mean, first of all, let’s continue this conversation and here’s an invitation. If you want to carry on having glorious, multidisciplinary, cross continental conversations about the future of the information’s ecosystem that we need, that we deserve, that we must design and co-create together, just call us, you know where to find us. And we have everything we need. I hope you can feel that. I really believe we have everything we need. We also know now what also needs to be funded, there’s some clues in here. So there’s a plan. Can we give an enormous loving hand of applause to these brave minds.
