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 kind until 2015. And in 2013, I was the only full-time employee. In the first half of 2013, I had a collaborative partnership going on with the University of Pennsylvania and a bit of funding to support some interns and fellows, and Allon Bar who I hired on contract in late 2013. So it was a very shoestring operation. We kind of cobbled it together with band-aids and paper clips and scotch tape.
We just had the idea that there needed to be a standard against which companies should be evaluated for respecting human rights. It needed to be something that made sense to investors. It needed to be something that resembled rankings and ratings of companies on other issues and in other industries. It needed to learn from what others had done in terms of what was effective and what was not.
We didn’t have the funds to actually produce the ranking for the first couple years. So we took our time doing a lot of research and consultation and producing iterative drafts of criteria before it actually became a methodology. So, in the summer of 2013, I was working with Tim Libert and Hae-in Lim, some students, and also with some researchers who were funded by Internews, to just take some draft criteria and test them out by looking at companies in some different countries and regions to figure out which criteria even were measurable or made any sense to evaluate, and which types of criteria didn’t work. Just to get some basic understanding of what made sense to include if the purpose was to incentivize company improvement and not just create sensational reports about outrageous things.
We learned a lot, but we also faced some resistance. A number of companies now have pointed to their results in the Index, and pointed to their improvement and to RDR’s work as being useful and constructive. But in 2013, some of the same companies were not happy about the idea of a public ranking when they learned about it, and tried to convince me it was not a good idea.
ZR: That’s a great story. And now they’re using it.
RM: At the time, a number of companies found this idea to be quite threatening. And today some of those same companies are using the Index and the methodology internally and, at least privately, if not publicly, acknowledge that is very helpful.
ZR: Usually, when I explain to people why I think what we do makes a difference, the thing that I start with is that there are companies that actually talk to us and they say, “Look, we made this change because you asked us to do it.” It’s satisfying to know that some of those who use it now felt differently back then because obviously, as you know, there are still companies that won’t give us the time of day. But clearly that can change.
RM: Yeah, I mean I really knew that we were succeeding when a company that wasn’t in the Index approached me and asked if they could be in the Index. We only had so many resources for so many companies that we had to prioritize. We just weren’t able to include them.
ZR: Tell me, what was your proudest moment working at RDR?
RM: Well, there were a lot of proud moments so it’s hard to pick one. When investors started citing our data in shareholder resolutions, that was a very proud moment. When we saw Apple actually making changes in response to the shareholder resolution that cited our data, that was a very proud moment.
Another very proud moment was seeing civil society and research groups around the world using the methodology to hold industry in their regions accountable. When SMEX, in the Middle East/North Africa region, applied our methodology to telcos in that region and showed just how little was being disclosed and just how poor the policies were, that was a very proud moment. It showed that the methodology can be used in a lot of different ways. It’s not just about people in a privileged country applying criteria to people and to companies in other parts of the world. But it’s people in their own regions able to use these criteria to empower themselves to advocate with companies in their region to protect their rights better. That was a really proud moment, when we were able to see how the methodology was being picked up by people in lots of different parts of the world.
ZR: I feel like that’s one of the parts of the work that’s grown the most exponentially. I can’t even keep track of how many pots we have in the fire with different people doing adaptations of our methodology.
RM: What’s made me most proud, especially since I’ve left and seen more adaptations coming out, is just knowing that this methodology and the work we did together – the work you all have done together since –-that impact we’ve made lives on no matter what. The methodology, the way of thinking about human rights, digital rights, and corporate accountability – RDR has left an indelible mark that’s going to continue to evolve through all kinds of research. It’s had a huge impact on how investors think about these issues. And, so no matter how RDR evolves from here, it’s going to live on in really interesting ways. The impact is going to continue to spread in ways that will be hard to predict.
And one thing that I really like is that it’s not centralized. We don’t control the methodology, we don’t control how it’s used. On one hand that might seem scary, because who knows who might do what in what strange way. But on the other hand, the fact that we don’t control it in a centralized fashion and that we’re not trying to control the IP, we’re not trying to license the use of the methodology, means that it can’t die. People are free to build off of it in different directions, in ways that empower different groups of people to use the leverage that they have available, to bring about change by companies.
ZR: My last question on this topic is, what do you think is unique about it to this day? Obviously, when you started it, it was completely unique. There was nothing like it. But there are more people looking at these issues than there were back then. So what do you see as unique about it, especially now that you have some distance from it?
RM: I guess one thing that’s unique about it, is that it represents the input of a lot of people from many different fields, from many different parts of the world. We were not just a group of experts who sat down and figured out a methodology. We had a few ideas, but we workshopped them with people from a range of different countries and regions with a range of different types of expertise. We then took that and workshopped it again, talked to companies about it and got a lot of company input in addition to input from other stakeholders, then revised it again. We did a test run, then improved it again for the first Index, then learned the lessons from the first Index, and improved it again.
And so because of its iterative and consultative nature, it doesn’t constitute any one person’s ideas or agendas. It’s a high bar, but it’s a reasonable bar. It’s achievable and it reflects a broad consensus of what a rights-respecting company ought to be doing.
ZR: Tell me what you’re working on right now. I know you’ve been doing a lot of Section 230 related work?
RM: So at the Wikimedia Foundation, the job of my team, who are responsible for public policy advocacy, is to advocate for laws and regulations and government behaviors that make it possible for people to edit Wikipedia – no matter who they are and where they are, without fear of being threatened or censored or sued and so on. In the U.S. Section 230 is an existential thing for us because, not only does it protect us from liability for what people post on Wikipedia, but it protects the right of volunteer editors to actually enforce rules that are context-appropriate without being sued and without us being sued. And so the entire model depends on Section 230.
Whether any reforms to Section 230 would be okay, you’d really have to red-team it, and in great detail, to see what unintended consequences could arise for Wikipedia or other public interest platforms that do not rely on targeted advertising business models. Most Section 230 reform proposals focus on the large commercial platforms, and their authors aren’t thinking about the implications for non-profit or decentralized, community-run platforms like ours.
ZR: You can’t say, “Oh, it needs to stay exactly the same,” but it also ultimately has to be a tested, well considered change if it is changed.
RM: Exactly. So people ask “Well, could you accept any reform?” And It’s hard to say in general terms.
Wikipedia is now subject to the EU’s Digital Services Act as a Very Large Online Platform, which means that the Wikimedia Foundation (as Wikipedia’s technical and legal host) is required to do risk assessment and transparency reporting. Gee, sounds familiar (these are key parts of RDR’s standards). The DSA also requires grievance and remedy mechanisms. Again, sounds familiar. I think there could have been some RDR influence on what the DSA requires. We were already doing these things so it’s mainly about strengthening our practices and making sure we are communicating them clearly, and addressing risks in the ways European regulators require.
Another important thing about the DSA is that we (Wikimedia) were in dialogue with European lawmakers throughout the drafting process. The final scope of the law took Wikimedia’s volunteer-run content moderation model into account: it only applies to content moderation rules set and enforced by the platform operators, not volunteer communities.
But I’m not convinced that U.S. lawmakers should consider DSA-style requirements in the context of Section 230. . Of course, having a privacy law would help deal with a bunch of the issues that people are trying to solve with Section 230. (RDR’s analysis of targeted advertising and algorithmic systems reached a similar conclusion in 2020.) So we are saying to Congress: why don’t you all try the other things first before you mess with Section 230. But mainly, we’re just asking, “If you do want to revise Section 230 in a way that doesn’t hurt Wikipedia, then you need to bring us into the room when you’re drafting anything.”
ZR: I always use Wikipedia as the first thing I refer to when people ask: Why shouldn’t we change Section 230 or why shouldn’t we break it? It’s not a niche thing, everybody uses it.
Well, this was great. Thank you and it was good to talk to you.
RM: Well, congratulations and I look forward to following what happens next.
