What links tens of thousands of parents and carers falsely accused of fraud by Dutch tax authorities; a multinational food company unlawfully monitoring workers’ movements; and the AI tool enabling users to sexualise images of women and children?
In 2021, Amnesty International uncovered how racial profiling was “baked into the design of the algorithms” used by Dutch tax authorities to determine whether claims for childcare benefits were potentially fraudulent.
In 2024, Reversing.works, which exposes how algorithms and surveillance affect workers’ rights, revealed that Glovo, a multinational food delivery platform, was monitoring workers’ movements outside of their work shifts, keeping hidden scores on them, and sending detailed monitoring of their work to third parties.
In 2026, AI Forensics showed how Grok, an AI tool and image generator made by the xAI corporation, was generating “a flood of sexualized images of women and minors, along with illegal Nazi and ISIS material.”
These and countless other scandals are bound by two common themes.
They show that if that technology is left unchallenged and unscrutinised, it threatens our most fundamental rights, as well as our democracy. And they show how civil society is an indispensable line of defence in preventing this.
A gap in the ecosystem
With technology saturating almost every aspect of our lives, civil society’s role as a watchdog – ensuring that tech promotes informed, democratic societies rather than undermines them – is increasingly important.
To be able to perform this task, however, civil society needs technical skills, as a new report by the European AI & Society Fund and Civitates makes abundantly clear.
“There’s a lot of public concern over the proliferation of technology and how fast it’s spreading, specifically AI,” says Līva Vikmane the European AI & Society Fund’s Programme Manager, Community and Insights. “Civil society’s ability to be a public interest voice and to scrutinise technology can help build public trust in it. We need to have ways to make sense of what’s happening, to understand how technology is shaping society, and ways to address concerns.”
We need to have ways to make sense of what’s happening, to understand how technology is shaping society, and ways to address concerns.
Closing the expertise gap: How to strengthen civil society’s skills to shape Europe’s tech future makes an irresistible case for long-term public funding and philanthropic investment in equipping civil society with the technological skills to do this.
In fact, it’s fair to say that the future success of Europe’s tech laws – the most advanced on earth, including the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA) – is at stake.
Analysis by Civitates and the European AI & Society Fund shows that without civil society playing an active part in monitoring and evidence-gathering, these laws will fail to deliver on their potential.
“As funders, we saw a gap in the ecosystem in terms of the technical skills civil society needs to bring evidence to regulators about what’s happening on social media platforms. We wanted to know why there’s a funding gap and what public institutions, philanthropy, civil society and technologists can do to bridge it,” says Vikmane.
Guardians of the public interest
The European Commission’s Executive Vice-President Virkkunen has emphasised the “crucial role” that civil society plays in providing scrutiny and accountability in the DSA’s implementation. But this recognition needs to be backed by proper funding. Claudio Cesarano, Civitates’ Senior Programme Manager for Tech and Democracy says: “The question is who is paying for the work civil society is doing to keep tech accountable?”
The question is who is paying for the work civil society is doing to keep tech accountable?
Cesarano adds that the ire that Europe’s tech laws are drawing from the US administration and some Big Tech companies, might also be off-putting for funders: “The counterpoint is that civil society are actually independent guardians of these platforms and are working in the public interest to give us an evidence-based picture of how the technology we use every day works.”
In a context where there are a limited number of philanthropic funders in Europe supporting civil society’s tech work, public funding is essential to make this structural shift possible.
Among the report’s recommendations is that the EU provides civil society with accessible, flexible and long-term funding through the forthcoming Multiannual Funding Framework (MFF) that can strengthen this technical work. It could also redistribute Digital Services Act (DSA) fees and fines to bolster civil society’s technical capacity, while national governments should also make funds available.
On the other side, philanthropic foundations can contribute to this effort by expanding their support to organisations as well as by offering spaces for connection and community building between technologists, CSOs and affected communities.
The more technologists that can join civil society, the greater the hope that tech will uplift people, society and the planet – rather than cause them harm.
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