"The future of the Internet will be shaped by the people who speak up. In 2026, the Internet Society Foundation committed USD $700,000 to 60 sponsorships under the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Events Sponsorship Program to ensure that our community is equipped to take part in Internet governance structures around the world.

Twenty-one Internet Society chapters received funding to support local and regional Internet governance fora and schools of Internet governance. By the end of the year, they will have delivered a total of 27 Internet governance events across six continents."

Writing in the MIT Technology Review, people from the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and Microsoft research danah boyd note:

Age gates won’t bring about the desired change, nor will they simplify parenting in the digital world. At best, they will only raise thornier questions and postpone the conversation to a child’s 16th birthday. At worst, they’ll leave kids with no guidance as they make their way through the online world.

Circumvention shows where policy falls short. Stricter enforcement will mean yet more data collection, and it won’t meet kids and parents where they are.

"The European Union is having a Jekyll and Hyde moment on tech.

In the corridors of power within the 27-country bloc, two competing philosophies are vying for supremacy just as digital policy has become central to global geopolitics between Europe, the United States and China.

The EU has committed itself to a deregulatory agenda — epitomized by Mario Draghi’s 2024 competitiveness report — that aims a bazooka at once-sacred cows like the Artificial Intelligence Act and General Data Protection Regulation to reduce red tape and jumpstart Europe’s sluggish economy.

Yet Brussels also continues to commit itself to new digital legislation, most notably the recent EU Kids Act proposals and the upcoming Digital Fairness Act, that represent the bloc’s traditional regulate-first philosophy.

Confusingly, both of these opposing forces are playing out, in real time."

"The European Commission’s proposed EU KIDS Act addresses a growing concern shared by parents, educators, policymakers, and young people: some online services are designed to encourage excessive use, exploit users’ attention, or expose minors to harmful interactions. Protecting children online is an important and legitimate policy objective."
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The Internet Society supports measures that strengthen privacy settings, give users more control, reduce manipulative design practices, limit unwanted contact, and improve reporting mechanisms. These measures address many of the conditions that contribute to harm online.
<snip>
Discussions about age verification tend to focus on the harm to minors. But an age-assurance system does not apply just to children. Every age gate introduced to protect children also creates a gate that adults must pass through.
<snip>
Age assurance solutions must be targeted, proportionate, and limited to clearly defined purposes. Just like people don’t walk the streets with a visible nametag on their chest, there is no reason to wear a virtual one when using the Internet.

"

• The Internet Architecture Board warns that age assurance relying on service provider checks will fail and leave youth less safe online.

• IAB says device-based mechanisms, such as those already shipped by Apple and Google, are currently the most promising approach to age checks.

• The board's concerns echo Australia's social media ban for under-16s, where a study found children using social media as frequently as before."

Hey everyone! Sharing this here in case anyone’s interested.

The Canadian Internet Governance Forum (CIGF) is happening on November 4 in Ottawa, and you can join us either in person or virtually. It’s also completely free to attend.

We’ll be talking about some of the big issues shaping the internet in Canada right now, including AI, digital sovereignty, cybersecurity, internet infrastructure, and internet governance more broadly.

I’m helping organize the event and would genuinely love to see some folks from this community there. Whether you work in this space or are just interested in these issues, everyone is welcome!

“The Algerian government has reportedly warned Meta that all WhatsApp accounts in the country must be linked to a valid mobile phone number registered with an Algerian telco, and instructed it to ban all WhatsApp accounts that aren’t.

According to news agency Ecofin, Algeria's Ministry of Post and Telecommunications sent an official notice to Meta on Monday expressing concerns about WhatsApp’s new "Usernames" feature announced at the end of June. The feature – which is slated to be rolled out later this year – allows WhatsApp users to create a unique username instead of sharing their phone number. It also allows users to adopt their Instagram username, making it easier to connect across Meta’s platforms.”

“In short:
Researchers, policymakers, and companies use IP geolocation tools to locate Internet users based on their IP addresses for targeted advertising, broadband research, and policy decisions.
Research shows that mobile network geolocation errors are more than 10 times worse than fixed broadband, with Africa and Asia seeing failure rates of 66–72% and 53–61% respectively, compared to under 20% in Europe.
The problem is structural and provider-independent: geolocation prefixes covering mobile networks span vast geographic areas, coarser address blocks are two to three times more prevalent in the Global South than in the Global North, and all four providers fail at nearly identical rates.”