Palestine Digital Activism Forum 2024

7amleh – The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media launched the first Palestine Digital Activism Forum in 2017, and since then it has become one of 7amleh’s annual events.

The PDAF aims to:

• Provide a platform to discuss the challenges that Palestinians face the Palestinian civil society to protect Palestinian digital rights and digital activists working on the Palestinian cause in a positive and constructive manner.
• Provide a space for exchanging social media experiences and expertise in order to develop social media activism inside and outside Palestine and to develop strategies to address the serious challenges and threats faced by digital activists.
• Link the work of local organizations and movements with international counterparts to exchange experiences and to find solutions to the dilemmas they face and ways to cooperate and coordinate actions.

Palestine Digital Activism Forum (PDAF) 2024 aims to put Palestinian digital rights as a priority both regionally, and globally, in an attempt to mobilize an intersectional struggle for a safe, fair and free digital space for all. AI technologies have already started to shape our lives, and they will soon have an even greater impact on the world. The Palestinian experience shows us that we must be cautious when it comes to AI. In convening allies from civil society, academia, industry as well as activists and human rights defenders, we hope to start the necessary conversation around ensuring AI is developed with the respect and dignity of peoples in mind.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has seemingly seeped into all facets of society in recent years. The advancement of chatbots and image generation platforms has AI showing up in the lives of average people, but AI driven technologies are more everpresent than most know. Many claim AI technologies will save humanity, or at the very least, improve our lives greatly. And, there are quite a few amazing advancements that have created much deserved hope. However, AI technologies have also proven to exacerbate longstanding biases, discrimination, and hate as well. Sometimes, these exacerbations are implicit defects, which can be fixed through processes such as debiasing datasets. However, nefarious actors have also found many ways to intentionally weaponize AI-powered technologies to cause harm. In this confusing mess, it is clear that technologists, world leaders, and civil society need to come together to form greater insurances and accountability for the development of ethical and explainable AI.

In the instance of Palestine, and Palestinian identity, AI has clearly already caused great harm. The digital rights community must learn from the AI-driven dehumanization of Palestinians, and come together to advocate for responsible, explainable, and accountable development of AI technologies. We hope that the 8th annual PDAF can be an occasion for just that.

Find out more about the event here.