Special Edition - Framing 2026
The Balance team is preparing a special edition to open 2026 — a collection of stories, ideas, and sharp insights on where digital power is heading, and how we might rethink it.
Latest
Balance Brief: 6 Nov to 19 Nov 2025
The year is rushing to an end. And as the new year arrives, one thing is certain: tech has left a lasting mark. Our biweekly newsletter attempts to capture these impressions of tech. This week, we see how digital infrastructures become political battlegrounds, governance races to keep pace with technological
Balance Brief: 22 Oct to 5 Nov 2025
We’ve had a busy two weeks, initiating conversations about Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) in Sri Lanka. The island is rushing to implement a digital ID system, followed by a sovereign cloud. As is our style, we wished to slow down and consider digitisation from a rights-based perspective. We’ll
Balance Brief: 7-21 Oct 2025
Technology moves fast, but power moves faster. Every fortnight, the Balance Brief gathers the most compelling stories, debates, and ideas at the intersection of technology, rights, and imagination — helping you stay grounded in a world being rewritten by code, platforms, and politics. The Balance Brief is for those of us
Sovereignty Hollowed: Britain’s AI Capture
Britain’s AI “sovereignty” is a mirage — US tech giants are wiring the country’s future to their own machines, bending policies, narrowing choices, and leaving citizens with the costs of capture.
The Power and Possibilities of Tech in Nepal’s Gen Z Uprising
From Sri Lanka to Bangladesh, Indonesia to Nepal, youth are rising. In streets and online, they expose corruption and demand change — showing both the power and limits of tech.
Designed for Control: Rethinking infrastructure, power and the public
Across the Global South, Digital Public Infrastructure is being sold as a leap forward for inclusion and modern governance. But as Pamodi Hewawaravita reveals, these systems often deepen exclusion, entrench surveillance, and blur the line between public good and private control.
Who writes the rules? The new order of platform power
Miraj Chowdhury examines how the Trump administration’s alliance with Big Tech is reshaping not just US regulation but global digital governance — with far-reaching consequences for rights, power and accountability.
Documenting resistance, building alternatives: The App Censorship Project and the struggle for digital freedom in Asia
From app removals in China to quiet compliance in Hong Kong, Benjamin Ismail traces the rise of platform-enabled censorship and the complicity of global tech giants in enabling digital authoritarianism.
Growing sideways: The Seapunk imagination
Sam de Silva (SD), founding producer of Balance, and Sam Chua (SC), founding curator of Seapunk Studios, discuss how imagination, fiction and decentralised design can open up new ways of thinking about power, technology and resistance.
Platform power and populism: The architecture behind Hindu nationalism’s digital rise
In India, the rise of Hindu nationalism is both political and digital. Connecting grassroots mobilisation to click farms and vigilantes, Aishik Saha reveals the merger between digital capitalism and political ideology, and why reimagining the internet infrastructure is now a democratic imperative.
Navigating the labyrinth: Finding community on social media
From Friendster to Facebook, discreet blogs to divisive feeds, Katherine Francisco shares her emotional journey through the rise — and rupture — of digital communities.
Networks and minefields: When social media presents both opportunity and risk
Kirsten Han reflects on her experience as an activist in Singapore and civil society’s relationship with social media platforms in a difficult political environment.
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False starts and stalled reforms: Australia’s tech regulation landscape
Lizzie O’Shea examines Australia’s uneven approach to tech regulation, highlighting the gap between public support for stronger safeguards and a political system swayed by industry influence and the global power of Big Tech.
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Resisting Oppression: Focusing on information needs
The traditional approach to fighting censorship can be an exhausting technical game. By focusing on a needs-first approach, Patrick Boehler discusses how the fight against censorship and oppression must provide information essential for daily life.
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Campaigns, clicks and complicity: How civil society actors built the ‘buzzer’ industry
In this essay, Pradipa P. Rasidi traces how Indonesia’s pro-democracy volunteers and civil society actors helped build the country’s digital influence industry.
“Show us your screens”: Algorave and the radical joy of live coding
Prarthana traces algorave’s sonic manifesto and its defiant call: make the code public, make the culture shared, and make the dance floor political again.
From recruitment to resistance: When it comes to fighting radicalisation, fixing the tech is only one piece of the puzzle
An interview with Aizat Shamsuddin, the founder of Initiative to Promote Tolerance and Prevent Violence (INITIATE.MY), on how technology has allowed radicalisation efforts to scale up, and what needs to be done to address the problem.
Power Plays: The uncomfortable position between governments and tech companies
Saritha Irugalbandara reflects on how civil society, caught between governments and tech companies, needs to proceed with determination and thoughtfulness.
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A just transition to an AI future: Pursuing a labour-first AI agenda
As debates over AI safety, ethics and regulation intensify, Ranjitha Kumar and Vinay Narayan examine how Global South actors are carving out their own approaches — not by trying to win the AI arms race but by reimagining the game entirely.