Decolonizing Digital Platforms: Post‑ and Decolonial Critiques of North-South Power, Inequality, and Social Transformation in the 21st Century

Imagine a world where the tools we use to talk, work, and learn are not neutral. For decades, we have been told that the internet is a great equalizer, a borderless space where anyone can connect with anyone. But a growing body of research suggests that this digital world is built on much older, darker foundations. To understand this, we must look at the history of empires, where powerful nations extracted resources from distant lands, controlled their economies, and decided what knowledge mattered. Today, scholars argue that these same patterns have moved online. They describe a system where a handful of massive technology companies, mostly based in wealthy nations, own the digital roads, harvest the personal information of billions of people, and outsource the most difficult and dangerous tasks to workers in poorer regions. This is not just about business; it is about how power flows from the North to the South, shaping who gets to speak, who gets to decide, and whose lives are treated as valuable.

Two researchers, Bahram Kazemian and Shafigeh Mohammadian, have taken a deep look at this phenomenon. They call it "platform coloniality." Their work does not rely on new surveys or interviews but instead pieces together a massive puzzle using existing reports, news investigations, policy documents, and academic studies. They examine three specific areas where this digital power plays out: how internet access is provided to the poor, who actually does the hidden work behind our screens, and how artificial intelligence is being governed. By connecting these dots, they show that the digital age is not a fresh start but a continuation of historical inequalities, updated for the information era.

The first story they tell comes from India, where a major technology company once tried to give away a version of the internet for free. This program, called Free Basics, offered people with limited money access to a small, curated list of websites, including the company's own social media, without charging for data. The company framed this as a charitable act to help the unconnected. However, critics saw it differently. They argued that this was not true freedom but a walled garden, a digital enclosure where the company acted as a gatekeeper, deciding what people could see and what they could not. In public debates, activists compared this to the old East India Company, a historic trading empire that once controlled large parts of India. They warned that by making their platform the only way for millions to get online, the company was gaining too much control over local markets and personal data. The Indian regulator eventually stepped in and banned the program, ruling that it was unfair to charge different prices for different parts of the internet. This fight was not just about net neutrality; it was a struggle against a new form of digital dependency, where a foreign corporation could dictate the terms of a nation's basic communication.

The second part of their investigation looks behind the smooth, polished interfaces of the apps we use every day. We see clean feeds and smart recommendations, but these are built on the backs of invisible workers. The researchers found that the heavy lifting of keeping these platforms safe and smart is often outsourced to workers in countries like Ghana, Kenya, and Colombia. These workers are hired to review disturbing content, such as violence and hate speech, to keep it off the main feeds for users in wealthy countries. They also label images and text to teach artificial intelligence how to recognize things. The conditions for these workers are often grueling. They earn very low wages, sometimes less than two dollars a day, and face severe psychological trauma from the content they must view daily, with little access to mental health support. The system is designed so that the risk and the harm are pushed onto the most vulnerable people, while the profits and the credit for "safe" and "intelligent" technology go to the companies in the North. This is a modern version of colonial labor, where the dangerous and difficult work is done by people at the periphery, while the benefits are collected at the center.

The third area of focus is the rise of artificial intelligence and the growing concern that it is becoming a tool of "AI colonialism." Most powerful AI systems are built in the Global North using data and values from those regions. When these systems are used in Africa or Latin America, they often fail to understand local contexts or impose foreign cultural norms. The researchers point out that this creates a new kind of inequality. Data is extracted from people in the South, processed in the North, and sold back to them as a service, with little benefit returning to the communities that generated the data. However, the paper also highlights that this is not a one-way street. In places like Rwanda and across Sub-Saharan Africa, governments and civil society groups are starting to push back. They are demanding digital sovereignty, which means having control over their own data and the rules that govern it. Some are building their own local data centers and creating laws to protect their citizens from unchecked extraction. These movements are calling for a "Digital Bandung," a concept of cooperation among Southern nations to build their own digital infrastructure and reduce their reliance on Northern giants.

The researchers conclude that the digital world is a battlefield where old patterns of empire are being rewritten in code. They argue that fixing these problems is not just about giving more people access to the internet or making algorithms slightly fairer. It requires a fundamental shift in how power is distributed. It means building infrastructure that communities can control, ensuring that the workers who keep these systems running are treated with dignity and paid fairly, and recognizing that there are many different ways of knowing and being that should shape how technology is designed. The paper suggests that decolonizing the digital world is not a single project but a collection of struggles happening all at once, from regulatory bans in India to labor organizing in Kenya and policy changes in Africa. It is a call to recognize that the internet is not a neutral space but a place where history, power, and justice are constantly being negotiated. The future of our digital lives depends on whether we can move beyond simply using these tools to actively reshaping them so they serve everyone, not just the powerful.