Every year, we evaluate 26 of the world’s most powerful digital platforms and telecom companies on how well they uphold the human rights that are fundamental to our dignity and democracy.
Photo by ev on Unsplash. In 2022, as part of our effort to expand corporate accountability in the Majority World under the auspices of the Greater Internet Freedom Consortium, we partnered with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) to collaborate on a research project using
On January 1, 2024, RDR began the next chapter of its corporate accountability work with a transition to the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA). This move will give RDR an opportunity to engage with a broader international coalition of benchmarking efforts driving systems change through the tools of corporate accountability. It will also serve as a new bridge between New America and the World Benchmarking Alliance under our shared vision of advancing a more inclusive and sustainable digital future.
Over the past decade, Ranking Digital Rights has established a strong reputation for holding Big Tech and Telco Giant companies accountable for upholding human rights. Many bright minds have passed through RDR’s (figurative) doors, who have made important contributions to ensuring RDR would find the
In 2022, for the first time, Ranking Digital Rights divided its flagship Corporate Accountability Index—which, since 2015, has evaluated the world’s most powerful digital platforms and telcos on their respect for human rights—into two, becoming the Big Tech Scorecard (BTS) and the Telco Giants Scorecard
With the release of her pivotal Consent of the Networked in 2012, RDR Founder Rebecca MacKinnon issued a call to action for civil society to defend our digital rights from companies with the same rigor with which we’ve previously fought for our rights before governments. In
Since 2018, organizations across various socio-political contexts have adapted RDR’s methodology to hold platforms and other ICT services accountable. What do they each have in common? Protecting the rights of some of the globe’s most marginalized and discriminated against populations. Two of the most successful
Zak Rogoff: Can you start by giving me your observations of what RDR is like now compared to the beginning, when you founded it? Rebecca MacKinnon: In 2013, it was just an idea getting off the ground. We didn’t actually have an index of any
In 2018, the Cambridge Analytica scandal helped propel the perils of surveillance capitalism into the mainstream. The following year, the release of Shoshana Zuboff’s pivotal book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, cemented the issues of data privacy and targeted advertising as top problems of our
From its inception, Ranking Digital Rights’s standards and methodology were designed with investors in mind. Indeed, our Corporate Accountability Index was devised almost a decade ago alongside ESG ratings provider Sustainalytics. Since then, RDR has aimed to ensure our standards would be usable for responsible
When RDR’s first Corporate Accountability Index was released in 2015, grading 16 tech and telecom companies on their respect for privacy and freedom of expression, it was the first of its kind to rank the impact of companies on specifically digital rights. Unsurprisingly, it took the policy world
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