LaBekka: Building Feminist Digital Infrastructure

Written By Kirthi Jayakumar

Image: LaBekka (link)

With the growing centralization of the Internet under tech companies, surveillance, data extraction, and exclusion within digital infrastructures have endured as critical concerns. Feminist technologists in Brazil responded to these concerns through the creation of LaBekka, in 2016.

Set up with the aim of reclaiming control over data, creating safer online spaces, and challenging the gendered power dynamics embedded in technological systems, LaBekka emerged as critical feminist technical infrastructures that doubled up as a socio-political intervention. In the process, it reimagined how technology can be built and maintained collectively.

LaBekka focuses on building autonomous technological tools, promoting feminist system administration practices, and supporting collectives that seek alternatives to corporate digital platforms. It contributes to the broader movement that bridges feminist politics and technological practice, and foregrounds the sociopolitical dimensions of infrastructure.   

The beginning

LaBekka was founded in 2016, as part of a larger, growing ecosystem of feminist technological initiatives aimed at promoting digital autonomy and free and open software practices. Emerging from activist and hacker communities, LaBekka was birthed with the intention of developing self-managed and sustainable feminist infrastructure.

The core goals include developing feminist digital infrastructure, supporting self-managed feminist servers, promoting autonomous system administration skills, strengthening digital security for activist organizations, and creating safer online spaces for feminist communities.

From the inception, LaBekka has been steadfast in its commitment to broader feminist approaches to technology that challenge the technical and political assumptions embedded in mainstream computing infrastructure. By combining activism and technical expertise, LaBekka led by example, proving that technological systems can be redesigned to support collective empowerment and knowledge sharing.  

Building feminist tech  

One of LaBekka’s most significant contributions has been its focus on training and knowledge sharing in system administration, especially using Linux and free software tools. The initiative encourages collective learning processes that enable activists and community members to understand how servers function and how they can manage their own digital infrastructures. The focus on technical education challenges the gatekeeping that is rampant in technical communities. By promoting self-training and collaborative learning, LaBekka helps expand access to technical knowledge and empowers communities to maintain their own infrastructures.

LaBekka also develops self-hosted web infrastructures designed for feminist organizations and collectives. These infrastructures include static websites, collaborative platforms, and documentation tools built using free and open-source software such as Jekyll and version-control systems. The opportunity to self-host enables feminist groups to maintain control over their content, data, and communication channels. This enables activist collectives to avoid censorship, surveillance, and platform restrictions.

A significant area of work for LaBekka is providing digital security and protection for organisations, especially feminist civil society, given that they face harassment, surveillance, and data extraction online. By providing technical infrastructure and security practices, LaBekka helps build safer environments to facilitate easier organisation and communication. LaBekka also participates in creating alternative licensing frameworks that support feminist knowledge production. For instance, their Feminist Peer Production License (F2F) allows the sharing of knowledge while ensuring that feminist collectives can also sustain their work, and counters traditional intellectual property systems while emphasizing collective ownership and collaboration.

Creating futures for feminist technology

LaBekka represents an important example of how feminist politics can be integrated into technological infrastructure. By developing autonomous servers, promoting digital security, and supporting collaborative learning in system administration, the project challenges the centralized and exclusionary nature of mainstream internet infrastructures. LaBekka shows that digital infrastructure is not neutral but is rather deeply embedded in social and political relations. It offers an alternative vision of technology that is grounded in care, autonomy, and collective responsibility. Through these practices, LaBekka continues to reimagine how digital infrastructures can support more equitable and inclusive online environments.

References

Kirthi Jayakumar
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