Asia’s digital landscape is shaped by competing geopolitical interests, rapid economic growth, and histories of colonialism that continue to influence who controls technology and who benefits from it. From government restrictions on online expression to the dominance of foreign tech platforms, these dynamics raise urgent questions about rights, accountability, and regional autonomy. Luminate works with partners across the region to generate research, influence policy, and strengthen the voices challenging how technology concentrates power.
Governments across Asia are responding to the real harms children face online with sweeping social media bans and age-verification laws. But these measures risk creating new harms of their own, restricting young people’s access to information and expression while expanding surveillance infrastructure that compromises everyone’s privacy.
This live conversation brings together child safety advocates and tech policy experts Octania Wynn, Fir Redzuan, and Kate Sim to examine why these approaches fail to address the underlying harms enabled by tech companies, and how ID-driven access restrictions disproportionately affect marginalised communities. Together, they explore the tension between free expression and child safety, and what it takes to build a safer online world for everyone.
Farhan Julianto
Farhan is a Researcher at the Department of International Relations, Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He specializes in International Law, and earned his Master of Public and International Law Degree from Melbourne Law School. Farhan was also awarded as the Best Thesis after completing his undergraduate at Universitas Indonesia (UI).
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Fir Redzuan
Fir (She/Her) advocates for children's rights in all of their diversities.
She founded Malaysia-based child rights advocacy NGO, Monsters Among Us (MAU). Currently, she serves as the Advocacy and Strategy Lead in MAU, driving the child rights and youth participation agenda in different civic spaces. In 2026, she represented MAU at the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child State Dialogue and 100th Pre-Session reporting on intersecting issues such as digital rights, female genital mutilation, harms against children from minority and systemically marginalised groups before the UN Child Rights Committee.
Fir is also an independent consultant who specialises in programmatic cycles, trainings and facilitation, events and communications coordination and writing. She has consulted for regional and local organisations such as International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), UNFPA Malaysia, Architects of Diversity, Justice for Sisters and others.
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Kate Sim
Dr. Kate Sim is the Director of the Children's Online Safety and Privacy Research (COSPR) program. She has over 15 years of experience in sexual violence prevention and response, having worked across community organizing, frontline support, government, academia, and industry in Australia, the EU, the US, UK, and South Korea.
Most recently, she worked at Google where she shaped product policy on a range of children's safety issues, including non-consensual intimate imagery, financial sextortion, grooming, and help-seeking journeys for people impacted by harmful sexual behaviors. Kate holds a PhD and MSc from the Oxford Internet Institute and a BA in Gender and Sexuality Studies from Harvard University.
Octania Wynn
Octania Wynn is a researcher at ELSAM (Lembaga Studi dan Advokasi Masyarakat / Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy) in Indonesia, focusing on human rights, civic freedoms, and social justice.
