Twitter Linkedin
Donate

20 Apr

Posted at 04:25h in Newsletter by
0 Likes

Not-So-Gentle Reminder:
The Big Tech Scorecard Launches Next Week!

Next Wednesday, we release the 2022 Big Tech Scorecard, RDR’s ranking of the world’s most powerful digital platforms on their commitments to respect users’ fundamental rights. Set a reminder for April 27 to visit rankingdigitalrights.org and see which Big Tech company tops this year’s list, which ones improved the most, and which ones are bringing up the rear.

Same as last year, this year’s ranking includes a summary of our key findings and homes in on critical policy problem areas, like a lack of human rights due diligence, inadequate transparency about how companies enforce their own policies, and the black box of algorithms and targeted advertising. We also identify opportunities for hope and action that can help us chart a course for achieving more accountability from Big Tech. See below!

A collage of location pins, a compass, and a cityscape. The text reads, "Charting the future of big tech accountability."

RSVP to Join the Conversation about the Future of Big Tech Accountability on May 4

A week after the launch of the Big Tech Scorecard, we will host a panel of superstars to discuss and debate what the future of Big Tech accountability may hold. We will look at a range of issues, including:

  • The state of play in the U.S. and the EU when it comes to checking the power of Big Tech through regulation;
  • The impact of ESG investors and activist shareholders as they pressure companies to  connect human rights to material risks; and
  • Strategies for getting Big Tech executives to not just listen but also act on policies that better protect our privacy, free expression, and other fundamental rights.

Joining the conversation are:

RDR’s director, Jessica Dheere, will kick the discussion off with highlights from the 2022 Big Tech Scorecard, and our policy director, Nathalie Maréchal will moderate.

Register Here

To Fix the Internet, Fix Ad Tech First

Among the recommendations of our It’s the Business Model reports was for lawmakers to mandate a universal, publicly accessible database of advertisements as a means of auditing companies’ compliance with privacy and civil rights laws when they engage in ad targeting.

In a new companion essay to this year’s Big Tech Scorecard, RDR Policy DIrector Nathalie Maréchal takes this recommendation one step farther, asserting that to govern the internet without compromising free speech, policymakers must focus on regulating online ads. “The enduring role of online advertising in our media environments, and in our societies at large,” she writes, “makes it all the more important that we govern it in the public interest.”

Maréchal offers a prescription for fixing online advertising—and makes a case for how this could help solve some of the problems with unpaid online content, as well.

Read the Full Essay

What Does a Model Ad Policy Look Like?

You can find out by attending the Aspen Tech Policy Hub’s Information Disorder virtual pitch event. RDR, along with three other semifinalists, will compete for a $75,000 grand prize with our project Treating Information Disorder by Making Online Ads Accountable, for which we drafted new ad-tech standards and model policies that we’d like to see become the norm.

Watch live online on Tuesday, May 3 from 1:30 – 3:00 p.m. ET.

Register Here

Support Ranking Digital Rights!

If you’re reading this, you probably know all too well how tech companies wield unprecedented power in the digital age. RDR helps hold them accountable for their obligations to protect and respect their users’ rights.

As a nonprofit initiative that receives no corporate funding, we need your support. Do your part to help keep tech power in check and make a donation. Thank you!

Support Us

11 Apr

Posted at 12:24h in Law & regulation, Targeted advertising by
0 Likes

The SEC rejected Meta’s push to block a slate of human rights proposals, including one focused on targeted advertising

A round of rulings by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has made it clear that Meta (FB) cannot escape shareholder scrutiny on fundamental human rights issues. The SEC has rebuffed the company’s efforts to keep five proposals from going to a vote at its annual meeting in May. One of them, which RDR helped prepare, calls on Meta to assess the human rights impacts of its golden goose: targeted advertising.

If adopted, the proposal would require Meta to commission an independent third party to conduct and ultimately publish a human rights impact assessment (HRIA) of its targeted advertising policies and practices. This fully aligns with our human rights-based standards. Every company that forms part of the targeting ecosystem should continuously assess its human rights impacts, especially major players like Meta, which accounts for more than a quarter of all US digital ad spending, surpassed only by Google.

When faced by such resolutions, companies routinely try to convince the SEC to block them. In this case, Meta argued that the proposed HRIA would interfere with its ordinary business operations, claiming that the filer was “impos[ing their] own views and preferences on advertising strategy and standards.” Shareholders, it declared, should not get to manage “complex and strategic” issues such as targeted advertising—heaven forbid shareholders scrutinize the engine behind Meta’s nearly $40 billion in revenue. The company pointed to a 2021 case in which the SEC allowed the Walt Disney Company to exclude a resolution on the impacts of advertising on social media platforms, including Facebook. 

But Mercy Investment Services and NEI Investments, the shareholders leading the proposal, were undeterred and countered accordingly. Where Disney is but one of hundreds of millions of advertisers, Meta and its ad platform are the fabric that knits many of them together. Surveillance advertising is Meta’s lifeblood, with advertising windfalls comprising a staggering 98 percent of the company’s total revenue. The human rights harms that targeting enables are indisputably a significant policy issue. In other words, shareholders are not snooping into Meta’s “ordinary business”: they are investigating the causal relationship between the guiding logic of the company’s entire business operations and widespread human rights harms.

The SEC rejected additional attempts by Meta to exclude several other resolutions, clearing the path for a vote in May. Assessing human and civil rights impacts is the unifying theme of two of these proposals, mirroring broader trends this proxy season. Arjuna Capital and several co-filers targeted Meta with a resolution calling for a report on the potential harms of the so-called “metaverse” project. The scale of the project and Meta’s penchant for “moving fast and breaking things” before thinking about the consequences of its ventures reinforce the company’s basic duty to conduct this kind of assessment. Shareholders also demanded a new civil rights and non-discrimination audit, a report on the external costs of misinformation, and an account of why Facebook and Instagram’s Community Standards have proven ineffective against harmful speech.

In addition to the five proposals that will go to a vote next month, a proposal on stock ownership incentives was withdrawn after Meta promised to implement some of its components in 2023, while the SEC sided with the company in excluding another proposal related to lobbying disclosures.

Shareholders’ growing focus on the business models that sow the seeds of human rights harms makes it clear that companies can no longer evade accountability. Of course, Meta’s dual-class stock structure will allow Mark Zuckerberg to single-handedly defeat proposals like these. But the voices and votes of independent shareholders will still resonate widely, keeping the issue in the headlines, bolstering internal reform efforts, and laying bare just how detached Meta’s leadership is from public demands for accountability. It is past time for policymakers to intervene, and shareholder advocacy efforts like this one are key to keeping the pressure on.

06 Apr

Posted at 10:17h in Announcements, News by
0 Likes

Last month, we announced that we’re changing the name of our flagship research product. Say hello to the Big Tech Scorecard! And save the date for the launch on April 27.

But that’s not the only change afoot. Over the last year, we’ve been hard at work piloting new ways of deepening our impact by making our data and insights easier to access and use by our diverse range of stakeholders. This includes policymakers, investors, and digital rights advocates around the world.

Today, we’re unwrapping a little gift to ourselves by giving that work a bold new brand and a new digital home. We are thrilled to share them with you.

The animated gif begins with the old Ranking Digital Rights logo tumbling offscreen. We then see the new brand elements in various colors: arrows and circles. Text reads, “Ranking Digital Rights has a new look.” Different versions of the logo are shown. Then the tagline: “Advancing corporate accountability in the digital age.” The gif ends with the official logo: 3 blue arrows and a salmon circle organized in a square to the left of the text, Ranking Digital rights. The tagline is below.

Reflecting the range of RDR’s work: data-driven, dynamic, bold

Our colorful new brand, designed by In-House International, is vibrant, dynamic, and bold. (Just like we are.) The upward arrows reflect our drive to hold companies accountable and help them improve, while the circle gives a nod to the data points that we collect and draw on in our work. They also underscore the new tagline encapsulating our mission: Advancing corporate accountability for human rights in the digital age.

We’ve designed our new website, meanwhile, to be more attractive and user-friendly as well as better organized to reflect our expanding range of activities in addition to highlighting our core products, the RDR Index and the forthcoming Big Tech and Telco Giants scorecards.

Three new areas of growth

Three graphic images on a yellow background. From left to right: a shield, a lightbulb, and gears

Three new sections, in particular, deserve mention because they represent areas of growth for RDR: Policy Engagement, Investor Guidance, and Get Involved.

Our Policy Engagement section gives us an opportunity to show how we inform policy development. It gathers our enterprise reports, hearing testimony and comments, and statements we’ve signed onto in one place.

Likewise, Investor Guidance highlights our collaboration with institutional investors to push the companies we evaluate to recognize shortcomings in their policies and practices that could lead to material risks. We will also track digital rights-related shareholder resolutions here, including ones that have cited RDR’s research.

Get Involved is a call to digital rights organizations around the world to build on our methods to conduct their own research. It features corporate accountability research and campaigns from partners in Africa, Europe, the Middle East, India, Pakistan, and elsewhere. This page will also host our new Research Lab, a new trove of resources intended to help guide others to conduct corporate accountability research of their own. We will also make our extensive material in other languages available here.

Other new features we’re excited about include the ability to feature wins and multimedia more prominently, as well as offer multiple opportunities to subscribe to our monthly newsletter the Radar and to donate to support our work. (Remember, we do not take any money from the companies we rank or may rank in the future, or their competitors.)

We’ll be making improvements and adding new features and other elements as we go, so let us know if there’s anything you’d really like to see.

Looking good while looking ahead

Nine years ago, when we first launched RDR, our objective was to push the world’s biggest tech and telecom companies to embed human rights protections for freedom of expression and privacy at every level of their policies and practices. We have made good on that commitment, becoming widely recognized as the gold standard for assessing Big Tech and the Telco Giants on their respect for users’ freedom of expression and privacy rights.

Along the way, many of our funders and allies have pushed us to build on our rankings with more policy analysis and recommendations, collaboration with like-minded partners, and a stronger communications game. In other words, they encouraged us to focus on becoming more visible to amplify our impact. Our new logo and website, as well as our expanded scope of work, are a public answer to that call.

We can’t wait to share more of our work using these new tech and design resources. So follow the arrows, take a look around, and let us know what you think!

06 Apr

Posted at 10:10h in Newsletter by
0 Likes

Multi-colored arrows and circles, the new brand elements

This is The Radar, Ranking Digital Rights’ newsletter. This edition was sent on April 6, 2021. Subscribe here to get The Radar by email.

Same Rigorous Research and Rankings; Fresh New Look!

Over the last year, we’ve been hard at work piloting new ways of deepening our impact by making our data and insights easier to access and use by our diverse range of stakeholders. This includes policymakers, investors, and digital rights advocates around the world.

Today, we’re unwrapping a little gift to ourselves by giving that work a bold new brand and a new digital home. We are thrilled to be able to share them with you. 🎁

Our colorful new brand, designed by In-House International, is vibrant, dynamic, and bold. (Just like we are.) The upward arrows reflect our drive to hold companies accountable and help them improve, while the circle gives a nod to the data points that we collect and draw on in our work.

They also underscore the new tagline encapsulating our mission: Advancing corporate accountability for human rights in the digital age.

We’ve designed our new website to be more attractive and user-friendly as well as better organized to reflect our expanding range of activities in addition to highlighting our core products, the RDR Index and the Big Tech and Telco Giants scorecards.

3 New Sections Reflect Our Growth

Policy Engagement: featuring the work we do to inform policy development, and gathering our enterprise reports, hearing testimony and comments, and statements we’ve signed onto in one place.

Investor Guidance: highlighting our collaboration with institutional investors to push the companies we evaluate to recognize shortcomings in their policies and practices that could lead to material risks.

Get Involved: featuring corporate accountability research and campaigns from digital rights organizations around the world and a soon-to-come new trove of resources to guide researchers.

 

Read More

 

We’re Hiring!

RDR is growing, and we’re looking for team members who get up in the morning to hold tech companies accountable for their impact on our rights and our societies. Check out our Opportunities page to learn more about our open positions, which are also linked below. We will accept applications until the positions are filled. Please share them with anyone you know who might be interested.

Senior Program Manager

Operations Manager

Communications Manager

Senior Communications Associate

 

See All Open Positions

 

Shareholders Face Massive Barriers to Holding Big Tech Accountable

An installation of an iceberg with a burning Facebook logo near the United States Capitol, in protest of rampant climate change misinformation on the social media platform,Thursday, Nov. 04, 2021, in Washington.

CC BY 2.0 Eric Kayne/AP Images for SumofUS

Shareholders committed to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues have emerged as a powerful voice in the push for corporate accountability in the tech sector. But they face an uphill battle. The rules governing shareholder activism are tipping the balance of power even further toward corporate giants. In 2020, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which oversees stock markets and the companies traded on them, enacted a set of rules that marginalize smaller shareholders seeking to hold companies accountable. The draconian new requirements stifle investors’ ability to file proposals, secure support for them, and keep them on the ballot.

Dual-class share structures work hand in hand with the new rules to disenfranchise shareholders, entrench corporate royalty, and allow them to escape accountability for human rights issues. As the number of tech companies adopting skewed voting structures skyrockets, it is becoming clear that the time to act is now. We are calling on human rights groups worldwide to join the push to dismantle these barriers.

Read More

 

RDR Media Hits

Senior Policy & Partnerships Manager Nathalie Maréchal led our commentary on the response of tech companies to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She spoke to NBC and NPR’s Sunday Morning Edition about the role of Telegram, and discussed war-time content moderation challenges in the Washington Post’s Tech 202, saying: “the more complicated and nuanced you try to make your content rules, the harder they are to enforce.” Finally, she joined Access Now’s Natalia Krapiva on WNPR’s Where We Live to talk about how the Russian government controls journalism and social media, and how Russians circumvent online censorship.

Save the Dates

April 27: The Big Tech Scorecard launches!

May 4: The Future of Big Tech Accountability (online)

We’ll be presenting the key findings from this year’s Big Tech Scorecard. The findings will contribute to a conversation with panelists to take stock of our movement’s recent victories and challenges, and chart the path ahead.

Wednesday, May 4, 2022, from 10am-12pm EDT

Watch your inbox for more details.

Support Ranking Digital Rights!

If you’re reading this, you probably know all too well how tech companies wield unprecedented power in the digital age. RDR helps hold them accountable for their obligations to protect and respect their users’ rights.

As a nonprofit initiative that receives no corporate funding, we need your support. Do your part to help keep tech power in check and make a donation. Thank you!

Support Us

22 Mar

Posted at 05:13h in Featured, News by
0 Likes

The RDR team has recently submitted input on two consultations launched by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). The first addressed the human rights dimensions of network shutdowns. The other sought feedback on how to apply the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) to tech companies.

Our submissions shine a light on two distinct sources of human rights risks. One of them emanates from governments using companies as enforcers of their will. Authorities have grown exceedingly comfortable with issuing network shutdown orders to network operators—the modern gatekeepers of access to digital communication. This unleashes a cascade of harms on the very people governments are meant to protect.

In our submission on network shutdowns, we emphasize that all mass disruptions to communication threaten human rights. They thicken the fog of war, conceal atrocities, disconnect loved ones, and expose civilians to violence that goes undocumented when communication is curtailed. These impacts arise when the offending party is a government seeking to cripple domestic opposition, but also when other governments seek to punish an aggressive regime by disconnecting it from the internet. Years of experience have shown that shutdowns are unequivocally harmful as a means of controlling information.

Our input on shutdowns also calls out telecommunications companies whose lack of transparency and compliance with government orders can encourage endless cycles of repression. We set out eight critical disclosures that we believe network operators must make to fulfill their responsibility toward their users and hold those in power to account. We also draw on data from the 2020 RDR Index to show how well companies have fulfilled these expectations. The overall gap in company transparency on shutdowns remains enormous and continues to put lives in jeopardy.

Another set of human rights threats, highlighted in our second submission, emerges from within tech companies. Corporate business models can generate uncontrollable risk for users of a company’s services and their communities. The High Commissioner’s call for input asked stakeholders to explore practical applications of the UNGPs to these risks. Our submission focuses on several of the business model risks identified by Shift, a non-profit centered on the practical application of the UNGPs, in its Business Model Red Flags project.

We illustrate how companies’ tendency to ignore clear risks stemming from their activities or third-party uses of technology that directly tie back to their business models. The corporate responsibility to evaluate these risks is one of the core tenets of the UNGPs. However, companies’ cavalier choices—from rushing into markets ostensibly on a path toward democracy to gearing their algorithms toward engagement—routinely run counter to this duty. Many of them could have been addressed preemptively if the company had implemented robust human rights due diligence (HRDD) ahead of time and made strategic choices anticipating likely harms. But time after time, the short-sighted imperative of economic gains proves to be more powerful than corporate responsibility.

Together, our submissions underscore the immense impact of decisions made in the top echelons of power and identify pathways to addressing it.

Read our submission to OHCHR on network shutdowns here.

Read the submission to OHCHR on the UNGPs here.

Twitter Linkedin

Media requests:

comms@rankingdigitalrights.org

Other inquiries:

info@rankingdigitalrights.org