About

Hello World! (Yes, I get that this storied phrase is overdone)

About Me

My name is Prateek Waghre. I am a technologist-turned-public policy researcher. Till November 2024, I was the Executive Director of the Internet Freedom Foundation (a digital rights organisation based in India). (see announcement).

My journey into digital rights was not a meticulously planned one. I spent a little over a decade playing different roles - software engineer (2 years), tech blog contributor/editor (1.5 - 2 years), solutions engineer (~5 years), product manger (~4 years). For about 8 of these years, I worked a content delivery network (CDN) (look it up, truly fascinating space) and learned about how the internet functions in ways I would not have otherwise. I also had the opportunity to see what it was like to work in high-regulation jurisdictions such as China and Russia.

Throughout this period though, I was also intrigued with the way:

1. Technology was shaping our lives
2. How much this was (or wasn’t) considered by many people building/working on them.
3. Of course, all this was in parallel with several technological, social, political developments in India - many of which, I wasn’t particularly well versed with, but intrigued enough to want to get involved in some way.

So, in 2019, when I was presented with an opportunity to enter the world of public policy, in general, and technology policy, in particular - I jumped in, like something out of a bad soft drink advertisement.

Since then I’ve been interested and / or studying technology affects those of us in liberal democratic societies (do not roll those eyes, friend) and issues like privacy, surveillance, the state of the information ecosystem, how the states seek to impose their will on it (internet shutdowns, censorship, and so on), and how parts of society seek to exploit the inherent openness of digital spaces, etc. Before the Internet Freedom Foundation, I worked at the Takshashila Institution

Note: Though, I might (ok, will) share my views about digital rights, technology policy developments, what it means trying to run an independent organisation in India, these reflections are personal.

About this site

The aim is simple, for it to serve a space where I own whatever publish, given that social media platforms are now unreliable and fragile spaces.