Web Summit: the actors of the digital economy are back in Portugal

Former NSA agent Edward Snowden here on a 2019 Web Summit video conference. AP - Armando Franca

Text by: RFI Follow

2 min

After a fully virtual 2020 edition due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Web Summit, a large gathering of all players in the digital economy, is back in person in Lisbon, Portugal from November 1 to 4.

Described by

magazine

as “ 

 ”, the Web Summit is the industry's must-attend event. 

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More than 40,000 people are expected this year at the

 Created in 2010 in Dublin, this forum has now been held in Lisbon since 2016 and in 2019 brought together some 70,000 web enthusiasts during the previous “physical” edition.

To access it this year, you have to pay 700 euros.

An entry ticket that allows hundreds of companies, international start-ups and curious or professionals to enrich their address book but also to initiate partnerships and projects.

The game is worth the candle for young shoots, because the 2021 edition wants to promote little-known start-ups, as well as Portuguese start-ups. 

Imagine the future

At the same time, the most cutting-edge experts in high technology and the Internet are meeting to imagine the world of tomorrow. But not only, because beyond the latest advances, the show offers conferences and debates where essential questions such as -COP26 oblige- how technology can help mitigate climate change, ethics in digital technology, respect democracy, disinformation, regulation or even the protection of personal data.

Themes that particularly echo the accusations against Facebook and its WhatsApp and Instagram applications.

Moreover,

, engineer and former Facebook employee turned whistleblower, who denounced the lack of data protection for Facebook users, will be present at the show.

Long awaited, she must speak this Monday during the opening night.

►

The whistleblower Frances Haugen asks Congress to better regulate Facebook

Another big subject, the “metaverse”, the parallel digital universe which makes dream the digital giants, in particular Facebook, and will be one of the topics of several conferences of Web Summit.

►

“Metaverse”: behind virtual worlds, very real issues

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