Episode 92: Niels ten Oever on Human Rights, Open Source, and Digital Infrastructure

Guest Niels ten Oever Panelists Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman | Richard Littauer Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. Our guest today is Niels ten Oever, who is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Amsterdam, and recently published a really interesting report from the Ford Foundation on “Human Rights Are Not A Bug: Upgrading Governance for an Equitable Internet,” which we will learn more about. Today, Niels shares his thoughts on what the internet is, what human rights are, and how to make sure that we all work in the open. Niels tells us about the idea he had to build this powerful tool for the people in Ethiopia and what happened with that. He explains how he got interested in Internet Governance, his thoughts on 5G, working with the Guardian Project to develop the StoryMaker app, and more about his PhD report called, “Wired Norms.” Niels also shares great advice for open source developers on what they can do to make the world a better place. Download this episode now to hear so much more from Niels. [00:01:41] Niels tells us how he got into being a developer and working in open source, and tells us about working with the Guardian Project to develop the StoryMaker app. [00:04:25] Niels explains how he came up with this idea to build this powerful tool for the people in Ethiopia. He talks about his involvement with Tactical Tech and more about the report he wrote for the Ford Foundation on “Human Rights Are Not A Bug: Upgrading Governance for an Equitable Internet” and he goes in depth about infrastructural norm of interconnection.” [00:16:23] Since Niels is someone who is an open source developer and has worked with open tools, Richard asks him how he views the intersection between large unseen infrastructure, human rights, and open source as this whole idea of everything should be able to be used by anyone else and how does that work with him with the idea of privacy. [00:20:56] Niels talks about an article that he did a