04 Apr Conducting Corporate Accountability Research the RDR Way Just Got a Whole Lot Easier

The release of ChatGPT in November and the imminent reality of artificial intelligence permeating our lives like never before has redirected the public’s attention to the ever-growing power of new technologies and the companies that wield them. Today, as part of our mission to provide support for civil society organizations holding tech power accountable around the world, we’re releasing two new resources: the RDR Knowledge Center and the RDR Scorecard Toolkit. These tools are both part of the RDR Research Lab, a hub for everything you need to learn how to use, adapt, and localize our approach to corporate accountability research. The hub was launched in October of last year.

In the Knowledge Center, researchers will find detailed information on how to apply each of our 58 indicators to assess company policies and their alignment with human rights. Anyone beginning a research project using this tool will be able to access detailed explanations for each indicator and its related elements, together with examples of how they have previously been translated into specific company scores. In addition, researchers can use this space to post comments and questions for the RDR team and other researchers.

Alongside the Knowledge Center, we’re also introducing our new Scorecard Toolkit, a web-based application where researchers can more quickly than ever before create the data management infrastructure needed to assess and score any company against our standards.

Previously, building data collection and management spreadsheets presented a high barrier for independent researchers who wanted to evaluate companies using RDR’s research methodology.

With this new tool, researchers will be able to set up the necessary materials to begin carrying out research in a short time, without needing specialized technical skills. They will be able to do so with the help of tutorials and explanations that will make following the RDR methodology only a tad more complicated than following your average cooking recipe.

More specifically, the Scorecard Toolkit will allow researchers to generate a data management infrastructure consisting of:

• Data collection spreadsheets: These are generated for each company selected for the analysis and include the specific services chosen for evaluation. Each data sheet has one tab per indicator, where each individual element is assessed.
• Scoring spreadsheets: These include two main components. The first is a data table featuring all the scores calculated for every company and service selected, along with individual company scoring tables. Using these scores, researchers will then be able to create bar charts and graphics to design their own scorecards showcasing companies’ performance. You can find tutorials and ideas in the “Analyzing your data” section of the Research Lab.

Until recently, the only option for many organizations who wanted to conduct RDR-like research was to go it alone, or almost alone, with ad hoc guidance from RDR. These new resources make it much easier to set up the research infrastructure and get expert guidance, which ultimately will help generate more corporate accountability research, faster. Already, these tools have allowed us to support recently published original research in Central and Southern Africa and South and Southeast Asia. Such studies set a baseline for tech accountability in markets where data about company practices is often nonexistent or hard to find.

Since I joined RDR as the Global Partnerships Manager in 2021, work has begun on 15 new corporate accountability studies, which in total evaluate more than 120 companies in 35 countries. By making our tools publicly accessible, we aim to encourage more civil society groups to carry out research that illuminates how companies behave in their particular environments, as well as how tech power is wielded across the Majority World.

As new and potentially perilous technologies permeate our lives, it has become more pressing than ever to scrutinize the companies behind the digital services we use. The launch of this triad of new research tools, including the Research Lab, is an important milestone not just for RDR but for the broader global movement to hold technology and telecom companies to account for respecting and promoting our human rights.

If you’re interested in carrying out your own research using our methods and standards, feel free to write us at partnerships@rankingdigitalrights.org. 

07 Feb RDR Raises Concerns About UNESCO’s Proposed Framework for Regulating Digital Platforms

On January 20, Ranking Digital Rights (RDR) submitted a comment to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) expressing concerns about the organization’s proposed “model regulatory framework for the digital content platforms to secure information as a public good.” The draft will be further discussed this month at a UNESCO conference in Paris.

The proposed framework seeks to guide the development of national laws and regulations governing online speech on the largest platforms, including Meta and Twitter, while also proposing modes of self-regulation. Positively, it encourages regulation that requires content rules compatible with human rights, transparent processes for content moderation, and systematic risk assessments. It endorses the Santa Clara Principles on Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation, which RDR helped develop. 

RDR is an independent research program and human rights organization based at the think tank 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, primarily through our yearly Corporate Accountability Index. Using this research, we push platforms hard to increase transparency and improve their respect for human rights. We have also conducted in-depth research on the role of the targeted advertising business model, a key driver of today’s massive proliferation of harmful content. 

We, therefore, strongly share UNESCO’s concern about the prevalence of harmful content on digital platforms, including hate speech, harassment, doxxing, misinformation, and other types of content that is damaging to freedom of expression and information, privacy, and other human rights. Much of this content disproportionately harms marginalized groups, creating additional barriers to their participation in civic discourse.

We also want to call attention to important problems with the proposed framework, and its development process, which will hamper its usefulness as a tool for addressing these shared concerns. These problems include:

• Unclear mandate: It is not clear that development of this framework is within UNESCO’s mandate. Its development should therefore not proceed without a decision by the UNESCO General Conference, the organization’s chief decision-making body. UNESCO should also cooperate closely with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, which could ensure that the Framework does not inadvertently harm freedom of expression. 
• Minimal consultation process: The draft was first published on December 19, 2022, with a deadline for public comment on January 20, 2023. This meant the public had only a month to provide their input, during a period when many people around the world are celebrating holidays. This truncated comment period disproportionately hampers organizations with limited resources, including those representing marginalized groups. Further, despite the fact that the framework is intended to be globally applicable, UNESCO does not seem to have proactively reached out to a diverse set of civil society stakeholders for input. 
• Neglect of the role of targeted advertising: As RDR has documented, the incentives for the amplification of harmful content stem directly from the targeted advertising business model. Among other harms it facilitates, this model rewards content providers and advertisers for publishing content (paid and unpaid) designed to attract and keep users’ attention for as long as possible. This incentive perverts the value of the internet as a trusted information source by amplifying the most sensational and extremist content to generate page views and, thus, advertising revenue. The best way to address harms without encroaching on the right to freedom of expression is by protecting the data that is used to create such advertising, and by regulating how companies and advertisers are then able to transform this data in order to target messages and ads. At minimum,  governments should require greater transparency and due diligence from tech companies about how ads are targeted and moderated. Unfortunately, the present draft framework calls only for encouraging—rather than enforcing—advertising transparency, and it does so only for political ads. 
• Lack of attention to inferred data about users: To expand the data available for targeted ads and user-generated content, platforms also often algorithmically infer information about their users. This inferred information has a high risk of being inaccurate and biased. Regulation should therefore require enhanced transparency around algorithmic inference, and the framework should incorporate guidance for how to mitigate the effects of inferred data on the amplification of hate speech, disinformation, and other information harms it seeks to address. More areas of concern are discussed in our full comment. 

We appreciate the intention of the framework’s draftees. We agree, however, with comments made by our civil society partners, such as the Global Network Initiative and Article 19, who have argued that its development should not proceed unless these issues are fully addressed.

02 Feb Proton’s Raffle: Helping RDR Keep Big Tech Accountable Globally in 2023

Back in December, our friends at secure and encrypted email service Proton Mail invited Ranking Digital Rights to be a part of their 2022 Lifetime Account Fundraiser. The Proton community was asked, in November, to select which organizations they wished to see rewarded. Money was raised through a raffle in December where winners were rewarded with a Proton Lifetime account. We were honored to be chosen, alongside 10 other fantastic organizations, including allies like Access Now and Fight for the Future. And we’re so grateful: The raffle sold 68,000 tickets and raised $784,670 total, $71,800 of which will be given to RDR.

For a decade now, RDR’s rankings have been helping push companies toward greater respect for, and protection of, people’s fundamental rights to freedom of expression and privacy. Our small team and more than a dozen researchers all over the world work relentlessly each year to produce the RDR Corporate Accountability Index, which offers a comprehensive look at the commitments to human rights of the world’s most powerful tech and telecom companies

In 2022, the RDR Index comprised the inaugural Big Tech Scorecard, released in the spring, and our first scorecard dedicated to telecom companies, the Telco Giants Scorecard, released in December. This research makes public a rich array of data on company policies, giving us and our allies the power to tell compelling stories about how telecom and tech companies are meeting (or failing to meet) their human rights obligations.

As RDR enters its 10th anniversary year, we’re focused on making sure that our standards are as accessible as possible to all those who might be able to use them to yield better human rights results in the tech sector, including policymakers, investors, companies, journalists, and, of course, our civil society partners. The generosity of Proton Mail users will go a long way in helping us achieve this goal.

This includes expanding the use of our standards by local digital rights organizations around the globe, particularly in the majority world. RDR is determined to address the information asymmetries that have allowed companies to pay less attention to human rights in parts of the world that rarely dominate tech policy headlines. This lack of dedicated resources has repeatedly resulted in human rights harms, as we’ve seen recently from Kenya to Myanmar.

Last year, we helped local digital rights organizations publish new research on the effects of telcos and tech companies in Lesotho, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic as well as in Cambodia, Indonesia, Maldives, Nepal, Philippines, and Sri Lanka. This year, partners from Latin America to East Asia, will be releasing a total of 10 new reports using our methodology. Proton’s support will allow us to continue raising that number, bringing more local insight from those most affected by corporate behavior.

RDR’s standards and research also serve as an important touchstone for a large community of responsible investors. Over the past three years, we have recorded a number of notable achievements in this area. Our findings have directly informed a slew of recent shareholder proposals. A proposal at Meta we helped craft calling for a human rights impact assessment of its targeted advertising business model became the most successful shareholder proposal in the company’s history.

It’s only February and, RDR is already breaking new ground on upcoming proposals at Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta. But as a globally oriented human rights organization, we want to make sure that, once again, our standards are having an impact outside of the United States. Proton’s contribution will support RDR in developing ties with investors in “emerging markets” through new partnerships and collaborations. We’re also looking to expand our standards to address new technologies as they emerge. Finally, the contribution will help us bolster the use of human rights standards among ESG rating agencies, which have long been opaque about how they actually incorporate human rights criteria in their scores.

Without generous support, like that of the Proton Mail community and our other committed funders, RDR could not continue its essential work. And with that in mind, the whole RDR team wants to thank all the generous Proton Mail users who are already helping turn 2023 into a memorable year for holding the tech industry accountable for protecting our rights online.