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RDR is now seeking feedback on materials that will be used to develop pilot indicators to evaluate internet, mobile, and telecommunications companies on their policies and disclosures related to how targeted advertising affects the human rights of users and their communities.
As we announced last week, RDR is entering an exciting phase as we prepare to expand the RDR Corporate Accountability Index methodology to keep up with the rapidly-changing technology sector and its impact on human rights. After the release of our inaugural 2015 RDR Index, we introduced extensive revisions to update the methodology for the second RDR Index in 2017. However, we have only introduced minor revisions to the methodology since the 2017 RDR Index was released. In 2019 and 2020, we will expand and upgrade the RDR Index methodology to include new company types (such as Amazon and Alibaba), and will add new indicators that will address some of the pressing issues at the intersection of human rights and technology that have emerged since the current methodology was first developed.
Specifically, RDR will work to determine how and to what extent the RDR Index methodology can be expanded to address malicious exploitation of platforms optimized for targeted advertising, as well as the unaccountable and non-transparent application of algorithms and machine learning. We are starting with a focus on targeted advertising and the company practices that it incentivizes, including some uses of algorithms and machine learning.
Why targeted advertising?
Our goal in developing indicators that address targeted advertising is to set global accountability and transparency standards for how major, publicly traded internet, mobile, and telecommunications companies that profit from targeted advertising can demonstrate respect for human rights online. In the future, RDR’s work in this area can inform the work of other stakeholders: investors conducting due diligence on portfolio risk; policymakers seeking to establish regulatory frameworks to protect the individual and collective rights of internet users; and activists looking to encourage companies to pursue alternative business models and to mitigate the human rights harms associated with targeted advertising.
Progress Update
We held our first stakeholder consultation in January in Brussels, where experts on privacy and data protection helped us refine a set of consultation documents that we are now sharing for feedback. We will be convening a series of stakeholder consultations (in person in various locations and via conference call) over the next several months, where we will solicit input from experts in civil society, companies, and government. If you would like to participate in such a convening, please let us know via email to methodology@rankingdigitalrights.org.
Consultation Documents
Consulting with a wide range of experts and stakeholders—including companies that are likely to be evaluated—is key to developing a methodology that is credible, rigorous, and effective. To that end, we have prepared a set of consultation documents that synthesize RDR’s approach to targeted advertising and human rights:
- Rationale for RDR’s methodology expansion to address targeted advertising: an overview of why and how the RDR research team is approaching the indicator development process.
- Human Rights Risk Scenarios: a list of “risk scenarios,” each describing human rights harms directly or indirectly related to privacy and expression that can result from targeted advertising business models and the choices they incentivize companies to make.
- Best Practices: a number of best practices for company disclosure and policy that could help prevent or mitigate these risks.
Send us your feedback
We welcome written feedback by May 31 on these consultation documents. The feedback will help to inform further in-person stakeholder and expert consultations that will take place between April and June, which in turn will inform the drafting of pilot indicators that will be tested later in 2019. Please send all feedback to methodology@rankingdigitalrights.org. We look forward to hearing from you.
