Save the date! RDR’s Telco Giants Scorecard is coming soon. Our set of telco rankings will launch on December 5, featuring our evaluations of 12 telecommunication companies’ published policies and their effects on people’s human rights. The companies we rank cover ten countries, with subsidiaries operating in more than 150 nations. Overall, the ramifications of these companies’ policies touch billions of people worldwide.
Following Up on this Spring’s Inaugural Big Tech Scorecard
Since 2015, we have published five editions of our Corporate Accountability Index, evaluating the world’s most powerful digital platforms and telecom companies according to their policies on corporate governance, freedom of expression and information, and privacy. The RDR Index has appeared almost annually (in 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020) since our inception.
This year, for the first time, we divided our Corporate Accountability Index into two parts. The first part, now known as the Big Tech Scorecard, published in April, covered 14 digital platforms. The Big Tech Scorecard highlighted the fact that digital platforms are doing far too little to address the negative ramifications of their policies, including during critical moments like elections and pandemics. Moreover, Twitter came out on top of our ranking for its detailed content and content moderation policies. But now, with Elon Musk at the helm, the company appears to be hard at work dismantling key policies, and firing the human rights team, that helped it achieve its top spot.
Spotlighting Telcos’ Unique Human Rights Harms
While digital platforms have received a great deal of attention lately for the harms they perpetuate, telcos, still the primary providers of internet access globally, are just as likely to enable human rights violations. This is particularly true in two areas with risks to human rights usually associated with platforms: algorithmic systems and targeted advertising. In fact, there are strong incentives at present for telcos to exploit their large troves of data by engaging further in surveillance-based advertising.
Telcos, whose operations are much more intimately tied with governments, also perpetuate harms that platforms do not. Governments, especially in authoritarian regimes, have been ordering telcos to shut down their networks with increasing regularity. Meanwhile, all but one company we rank, U.S.-based AT&T, offers a zero-rating program, in violation of net neutrality principles. And, if pressured to do so, telcos can also hand over users’ communications, demographic, and billing data to both governments and corporate actors that can abuse this data for their own gains. Telcos, and the human rights risks they perpetuate, are in clear need of renewed attention.
Like the Big Tech Scorecard, the Telco Giants Scorecard will include per-company evaluations, industry-wide rankings, and a summary of key findings. We’ve separated our key findings into nine standalone essays, focusing on key themes specific to telcos. This includes a spotlight on net neutrality and zero rating, freedom of expression issues like shutdowns, a look at the unique ways telcos participate in targeted advertising, as well as an essay examining the discrepancies between parent companies and their subsidiaries in committing to human rights.
Expanding the Scope of RDR’s Accountability Standards
Some of the key findings this time around are buttressed by data from partner organizations that have adapted RDR’s methodology to help keep telcos accountable in their local contexts, as well as supplemental findings describing the ways in which telcos are engaged in targeted advertising. Many of the threats we document, including network shutdowns and internet censorship, are amplified even further in the majority world thanks to information asymmetries about the unique ways company policies violate human rights in these countries. In addition, subsidiaries of large telecom multinationals do not always implement the same level of human rights protections for their operating companies as they do in their home market. In October, we launched our Research Lab, which provides researchers and advocates with the tools necessary to continue implementing and adapting RDR’s methodology, thus extending the reach of our accountability standards.
Finally, while telcos perpetuate important digital rights harms, they also disclose less information about their policies and practices. We hope that by giving telcos their own output, we might be able to shed new, much-needed light on their activities. And we hope that more peers in the digital rights and corporate accountability communities—including activists, researchers, journalists, policymakers, and investors—will join us.
