**FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE**
April 27, 2022
Contact: Anna Lee Nabors, comms@rankingdigitalrights.org
Twitter Tops RDR’s Latest Ranking of Big Tech Companies; Musk’s Purchase May Threaten Progress. Amazon Ranks Last Again.
Washington, D.C. — The world’s most powerful Big Tech companies continue to ignore concerns about privacy, free expression, and discrimination for billions of people worldwide, according to the Ranking Digital Rights 2022 Big Tech Scorecard, released today. The Big Tech Scorecard evaluates and scores companies on more than 300 aspects of company policies that affect people’s human rights, focusing on corporate governance, freedom of expression and information, and privacy.
For the second year running, Twitter tops the list, but is still the best of the worst. Similarly, Amazon ranks last again, tying this year with Chinese behemoth Tencent. For the sixth year in a row, no company earns a passing grade.
The overall average of companies’ scores ticked up slightly this year, but such incremental progress, while encouraging, is far from enough. “Their lackluster improvement shows that companies are content to conduct business as usual when the state of the world demands anything but,” said RDR Director Jessica Dheere.
WATCH OUR VIRTUAL LIVE EVENT “CHARTING THE FUTURE OF BIG TECH ACCOUNTABILITY” VIA LIVESTREAM AT 10:30 A.M. EDT ON MAY 4. RSVP.
Accountability requires transparency, and companies aren’t telling us enough about how they develop and deploy algorithms, enforce their rules on targeted advertising, or what their protocols are for disclosing data breaches, among other indicators we monitor. Social media platforms and online advertising have created an infrastructure for influence operations that authoritarians, propagandists and other bad actors use to their benefit.
Meanwhile, recent whistleblower disclosures have helped fill the gaps and affirmed what we and other civil society groups have long argued: despite the best efforts of many working-level employees, Big Tech executives refuse to do what is necessary to protect people and societies from the harmful impact of their products and services. Policy Director Nathalie Maréchal said:
“There is a growing, global consensus that Big Tech needs to be more transparent, more accountable, and more attuned to the public interest—not just profit margins and share prices. These companies and the billionaires at their helms are going to need to decide if they’re on the side of democracy and human rights or on the side of 21st century networked authoritarianism.”
Many tech company employees understand the stakes and are working hard to improve their platforms’ policies and processes, sometimes in the face of resistance from their leadership. Twitter’s place at the top of the Scorecard reflects that. But it seems that these efforts to govern online speech and conduct also brought on Elon Musk’s hostile takeover of the company. Musk has proposed changes to the platform that include less content moderation, opening up algorithms, eliminating bots, and authenticating users. We will be following Twitter’s evolution closely and will report on changes affecting governance, freedom of expression, and privacy in the next Big Tech Scorecard.
Other highlights from the Big Tech Scorecard include:
- Twitter again took the top spot, for its detailed content policies and public data about moderation of user-generated content. Like most companies, however, it failed to report data about its advertising moderation
- Amazon, despite a notable score increase, remained dead last, alongside Chinese behemoth Tencent. It also earned the lowest score among all social media platforms we rank on our standard asking companies to explain their processes of enforcing their own content rules.
- Google had the fewest improvements, and for the second year in a row, it was the only company that saw its overall score decline, due to outdated policies on notifying search service users of content restrictions and encryption for Gmail and Google Drive.
The RDR Big Tech Scorecard analyzes the policies of 14 of the biggest global digital platforms headquartered in the U.S. (Twitter, Google, Meta, Apple, Yahoo, and Amazon), China (Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent), Korea (Samsung and Kakao), and Russia (VK and Yandex). The Scorecard was formerly known as the RDR Corporate Accountability Index. Every company we rank has its own report card that offers a detailed look at highlights from the past year, key takeaways, recommendations, and changes.
| Alibaba | Kakao | |
| Amazon | Meta | VK |
| Apple | Microsoft | Yahoo |
| Baidu | Samsung | Yandex |
| Tencent |
Ranking Digital Rights, an independent tech policy research program at New America in Washington, D.C., evaluates the world’s most powerful companies on their publicly disclosed policies and practices affecting users’ freedom of expression and privacy. Now in its sixth year, our tech company rankings have seen companies commit to protecting users’ rights in greater numbers each year.
Also new in the 2022 RDR Corporate Accountability Index:
- For the second year in a row, none of the 14 companies we rank earned more than 50% of the possible points on our targeted advertising indicators, and not a single company has announced a comprehensive human rights impact assessment of the mechanisms it uses to tailor ads to its users. Read: “We can’t govern the internet without governing online advertising. Here’s how to do it.”
- Shareholders have emerged as a powerful voice in the push for corporate accountability in the tech sector—and often as important allies of the human rights community. We document the essential role played by shareholder groups in corporate governance reform and identify specific policy reforms that can enhance this cause. Read: “It’s time to bring down the barriers blocking shareholder on human rights.”
- Every platform we rank except the Chinese ones and, perplexingly, Google offered feedback on the preliminary data we shared with them as part of our standard research process. While Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent have fewer incentives to engage with the human rights community, Google’s lack of input is an anomaly among U.S. platforms for which we have no explanation. It is also deeply concerning, given the power the company has to shape our information environment through its dominant search and advertising services.
See the full results from the 2022 RDR Big Tech Scorecard here: https://rankingdigitalrights.org/index2022.
More from our report
- Executive summary
- Key findings
- We can’t govern the internet without governing online advertising.
- It’s time to bring down the barriers blocking shareholders on human rights
- Why won’t Chinese companies talk to us? It’s complicated.
RDR Experts
Our research and experts have been cited in The Guardian, WIRED, FiveThirtyEight, Al Jazeera and many other media. Meet our team.
Jessica Dheere, Director, @jessdheere
Florida, USA; EDT (GMT – 5)
Areas of Expertise
- Corporate accountability in the digital age
- Business and human rights
- Algorithmic content-shaping and the targeted advertising business model
- Global trends in freedom of expression and privacy
- RDR Index findings and positioning
Nathalie Maréchal, Policy Director, @marechalphd
Washington DC, USA; EDT (GMT – 5)
Areas of Expertise
- Corporate accountability in the digital age
- Business and human rights
- Algorithmic content-shaping and the targeted advertising business model
- Global trends in freedom of expression and privacy
- Why RDR was created, and its global vision and mission
- China/geopolitical lens on business and human rights
Jan Rydzak, Company and Investor Engagement Manager, @ElCalavero
Washington DC, USA; EDT (GMT – 5)
Areas of Expertise
- Network shutdowns
- Content moderation
- Role of investors/ESG/SRI
- Transparency reporting
- Human rights due diligence
- Disinformation and crisis
- Analysis of company announcements and news
- United Nations and technology
To speak to an expert, please contact us at comms@rankingdigitalrights.org.
ABOUT RANKING DIGITAL RIGHTS: Ranking Digital Rights is a non-profit, independent research program housed at New America. We evaluate the policies and practices of the world’s most powerful tech and telecom companies and study their effects on people’s fundamental human rights. We are the only organization in the world that produces an open dataset on companies’ commitments and policies affecting users’ freedom of expression and privacy. For the full 2022 RDR Big Tech Scorecard data and analysis, report cards for each company, and raw data set, please visit: https://rankingdigitalrights.org/index2022. RDR’s research and experts have been cited in The Washington Post, The LA Times, The Guardian, WIRED, FiveThirtyEight, Al Jazeera, and many other media. We do not take funding from any of the companies we rank, their competitors, or any company that we may rank in the future.
ABOUT NEW AMERICA: New America is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy institute dedicated to renewing America in the digital age through big ideas, technological innovation and creative engagement with broad audiences. To learn more, please visit us online at www.newamerica.org or follow us on Twitter @NewAmerica.
