Big Tech companies operate as political actors that shape democratic life, public discourse, and AI governance in ways that are deeply gendered. Platform infrastructures amplify misogyny, queerphobia, and racialised violence while monetising harm through attention economies and weak or selective content moderation. From generative AI producing non-consensual sexualised images to the amplification of manosphere and far-right content, these dynamics are structural to platform power.

This talk argues that current AI governance regimes, centred on voluntary ethics, risk management, and elite participation, fail to confront these harms. They privilege corporate and state interests, neutralise conflict, and shift social and political costs onto marginalised groups. In this context, feminist resistance cannot be reduced to inclusive design or representation within Big Tech-led frameworks.

Drawing on countergovernance and feminist democratic theory, the talk reframes resistance as organised contestation: legal challenges, investigative journalism, grassroots coalitions, and collective mobilisation. Focusing on Brazil, it examines struggles around children’s digital rights, platform accountability, disinformation, and AI governance, showing how feminist and civil society movements confront platform power amid authoritarian backlash and deep structural inequalities, and how conflict becomes a democratic resource for imagining futures beyond Big Tech.