Recent developments in social media, automation and AI have heightened social concerns, prompting a range of experiments in alternative visions of technology. One such experiment is Tattle: an India-based organisation that builds citizen-centric responses to inaccurate and harmful content – an open source, civic-tech project emanating from a country where anxieties from a colonial past entwine with a majoritarian instinct and deep-rooted patriarchy.

In this talk, Tarunima will use Tattle’s projects – such as a plugin to respond to online gender based violence in Indian languages, or a searchable archive of fact checked content in India- as case studies to explore the polemics and pragmatics of working with alternative and sometimes conflicting imaginations of technology, such as those associated with de-colonial and feminist approaches. Tarunima will highlight how approaches to alternative tech are also shaped by geography, relationships between the civis and state, and the formal and informal institutional structures that they seek to influence and change. Tarunima will make the case for a deeper engagement of theory with practice to inform critiques of ‘big tech’, and the proposed agenda for change.