N/A, but when I looked up Telefonica, their homepage is all COVID-19 stuff which is pretty much what everyone is doing but I may look more closely at this particular case and continuity with the current situation
The initiative forecloses a serious discussion about the harms caused by transnational capital and privatization of the telecom industry
And it forecloses more meaningful connections across difference/ more meaningful activism by putting people into a happy shallow self-centered kind of activism
It forecloses a deeper engagement with issues and inequalities that cause child labor and make it harmful for the children and their families
It forecloses more radical conclusions for tech workers hoping to contribute to ‘social good’
The “free press” generated by social media sharing of the gamified achievements of the app users, which were branded with Telefonica
The publicity video for downloading the app was also shared on social media and was posted to the author’s facebook by her presumably nonacademic friend; the video is also on Telefonica’s YouTube channel, perhaps it was an ad on TV or internet as well? The project was also described on the company’s website, although I think that is no longer available.
All users of their prepaid phones being invited to “symbolically vote” against child labor when refilling, by sending a text - 1 million votes was to trigger the “campus party” (hackathon), which then brought together people who came up with the surveillance app
Denuncia-thon which enforced offline connections of the ‘digital activists’ - euphoric
Statements to the academics about moving beyond philanthropy, and about sustainability and leadership, naturalizing their goodness, in contrast to mining companies
Life-changing, according to the tech contractor: "able to make his work count toward a 'social good'" 674 - euphoria described by the otherwise formal corporate overseer of the project, cyber-optimism described by the tech worker - but the beneficiary is abstract to the point of the “activists” not having any idea how the app impacts them (which it doesn't); the distance is emphasized by the author, you see the child worker on the street but you don’t interact with them. The closeness of the online/offline relationship among “geeks with a heart” intensifies the Othering and abstracting of the beneficiary.
Continuing the development orthodoxy - the ethical is defined in terms of universalized values like “children’s rights” without any deeper understanding of local context than that child street vendors exist.
Responsibility is twisted around to work with the exit narratives - failed or quickly terminated programs are ok because they are responsible for enabling other actors who are really responsible for the outcomes. They enact the ethical and responsibility by platforming it for others to participate in and carry out - through the interactive apps, the hackathons, and the immediate handoff of all collected data to an overworked government agency
They also redefine the ethical and responsibility to line up with their corporate plans anyway - market expansion becomes the right thing to do because they bring digital access to information
Rather than trying to replace the government, they keep the responsibility with the government, but say they are partnering and enabling/enhancing what the government is doing.
They are shaping conditions for what counts as democratic order, etc. with their creation of shallow and ineffective “activists” doing a corporate-defined action for a corporate-defined cause
Becoming development orthodoxy at the UN Global Compact, see above - Citing Rajak 2016
Distancing from philanthropy
Distancing from mining industry’s CSR, even the term CSR itself, and distancing from harm mitigation
Naturalizing the “goodness” of their regular product/ market expansion mission
Thematically tying CSR initiatives to their product (digital ed)
Creating the consumer-citizen-activist as an activist in a narrow and shallow sense
Positioning self as enabler, not taking responsibility, not replacing state