For the second year in a row, Barcelona will be hosting the Mozilla Festival, an annual gathering of people working together to build a better digital world. RDR will be there in full force, hosting a Forum on rebuilding power through community support and a pop-up conversation on VPN transparency.
MozFest’s theme this year is exceptionally meaningful: Rewilding. We’re excited to question concentrated power while (re)connecting with digital rights researchers, advocates, technologists, and creatives from around the world.
Rebuilding community power through mutual support
On Friday, October 30 at 15:30 CET, we’re teaming up with Global Voices and other collectives to explore how mutual support, cooperative forms of working, and alternative sources of funding can nourish the roots of our community.
Our Forum, “Rewilding Our Gardens: Communal Governance in Tech Accountability Projects,” will create a space to think through these problems together. We are especially eager to bring together small and grassroots civil society groups as well as funders who seek to sustain and grow the collectives at the heart of the digital rights ecosystem.
The Forum will also feature a special message from philosopher and academic C. Thi Nguyen, an expert on the philosophy of games whose 2026 book The Score explores how scoring systems can shape (and distort) our values.
Our session will tackle some tough but critical questions:
- What forms of mutual support can help our community grow, remain passionate, and secure people’s livelihoods?
- How can organizations balance funding constraints, funder conditions, and the need to stand firm in their mission?
- How can we avoid drowning in superficial impact metrics?
- What structures will allow equity and trust to blossom while avoiding the pitfalls of hyperscaling?
- What role can funders play in ensuring the health of the ecosystem and the initiatives within it?
Why this Forum?
RDR rang in 2026 with a transition to autonomy, defying the conjoined pressures of funding cuts, government crackdowns, and AI-driven disorder that the previous year had wrought upon our community. We forged a unique partnership with our new fiscal sponsors at Superbloom Design, who work to shift power in the tech ecosystem.
The transition has given us the freedom to rethink how to rise up and stand together with our peers in the digital rights community to face a growing wave of tech-facilitated authoritarianism. This year we’re learning, growing, experimenting, and reinforcing our foundations while making room for new pathways and tools to hold the tech industry accountable on human rights issues.
We could not have navigated these uncertainties without the support and solidarity of the digital rights community. Paying it forward is now part of our mission. We believe there are better alternatives to endless consolidation in the name of efficiency. Building collective strength while celebrating autonomy and individuality is the essence of “rewilding.”
If you want to tell your story and help reimagine the tech accountability ecosystem, sign up for our Forum here!
Help shape our VPN transparency assessment!
We are developing a new methodology to assess the policies and practices of VPN providers through a human rights lens. Between MozFest sessions, we are planning an informal, small-group meetup to understand what the community would like to see in a VPN assessment.
RDR has spent 13 years assessing the world’s most powerful tech platforms and telecom operators. We have also teamed up with researchers around the world who have developed dozens of localized and community-focused investigations based on the RDR Index methodology.
Our new project on Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) builds on more than a decade of evidence-driven work. With support from the Open Technology Fund, we will identify the state of transparency and accountability in the VPN ecosystem, in partnership with Breakpointing Bad and the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable.
We invite anyone who cares about privacy and the tunnels that should help protect it to join us in exploring the key transparency and trust gaps in the VPN ecosystem.
We will share more details shortly. If you’re interested in joining, get in touch!
