Webfare Project
An interdisciplinary research project that explores how data generated by everyday digital life can become a shared and renewable form of value, fostering more equitable, inclusive, and human-centered digital systems.
Mission
To establish a practical “digital welfare” system that intercepts, valorizes, and redistributes the wealth generated by user data. The project achieves this by:
- Reclaiming Data: Utilizing European data portability laws to allow citizens to reclaim their digital traces from commercial platforms.
- Alternative Capitalization: Creating “intermediate bodies” (such as “Virtue Banks”) to aggregate and monetize this data for social purposes rather than private profit.
- Social Redistribution: Reinvesting digital capital into essential services—such as pensions, healthcare, and education—to provide substantial support to those who produce data but lack financial resources
Vision
To spark a “Copernican revolution” in social well-being by transforming digital data into “humanity’s greatest asset.” Webfare envisions a future where the “tyranny of merit” is replaced by a “democracy of need,” ensuring that the value generated by every human’s digital life is recognized as a shared human heritage that benefits all of society
Why it matters?
Today we live in an era of “data warfare”: tech giants extract value from our unwitting labor without giving anything back to society. This concentration of power creates inequality and turns us into passive spectators of our own future.
THE PROBLEMS OF TODAY’S SOCIETY
Unwitting Exploitation
Let’s stop handing out wealth to a handful of billionaires; data belongs to those who produce it.
Digital Justice
Claiming one’s data is not just a matter of privacy, but a right to active digital citizenship.
Institutional Sustainability
Let’s Use Data to Save the Healthcare and Pension Systems, Which Are Under Strain Due to Automation.
How it works?
The WEBFARE approach is grounded in a unique synergy between humanistic vision and technical innovation. Coordinated by the University of Turin (Philosophy) and the Politecnico di Torino (Engineering), the project translates philosophical theory into concrete technological and policy frameworks.
OUR APPROACH
Stakeholder Engagement
Through high-level events, seminars, and collaborations with strategic partners like INPS, MEF, and Cineca, WEBFARE works to establish “Digital Public Infrastructures” (DPI) that bridge the gap between academia, industry, and public policy.
Responsible AI
The project utilizes privacy-by-design technologies and responsible AI algorithms to interpret data ethically, enabling inclusive services such as alternative credit scoring for precarious workers.
Transparent Platform
We are building a platform for data collection that grants users full control through “data pedigree”, making every piece of information traceable, verifiable, and secure.