Original art by Paweł Kuczyński.
From friends’ status updates, to messages from political candidates, to regular old ads, what we see on the internet today is rarely left to chance. Online and on our digital devices, technology companies track our every move, collecting troves of information about us that can be used to influence what we buy, how we vote, and much more. The technologies underlying these processes — targeted advertising and algorithmic systems — pose critical threats to users’ rights to privacy, free expression, and access to information.
Today, we are excited to release our newly updated methodology, which aims to address the increasingly complex human rights threats posed by algorithms and ad targeting technologies. We also have expanded our index to evaluate new types of services offered by Amazon and Alibaba.
Developed over more than a year of research, pilot testing, and stakeholder consultations, our new indicators set global accountability and transparency standards grounded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As always, our indicators demonstrate how tech companies can respect and protect human rights online as they develop and deploy new technologies.
In the months ahead, we will be conducting research for the 2020 RDR Index, which will rank 26 companies using our updated indicators. More than 30 researchers around the world will participate in this rigorous process of data collection, verification, cross checking, and review. We plan to publish our results in February 2021.
Learn more:
- Summary of key revisions made to the 2020 RDR Index methodology [PDF]
Stay tuned for more updates on our work!
