Acknowledgments
Ranking Digital Rights Team at the World Benchmarking Alliance
Research Partner
We are deeply grateful to our research partner Open MIC, whose support was instrumental to the creation of the 2025 RDR Index: Big Tech Edition.
Jie Zhang, Open MIC’s Policy Research Manager, helped lead the research process with remarkable proficiency, drawing on her deep understanding of the methodology and subject matter.
We are also indebted to Open MIC’s leadership team – Michael Connor, Jessica Dheere, and Audrey Mocle – for their essential guidance and expertise.
RDR Research Community
RDR works with a community of experienced digital rights researchers from around the world. Their expertise in corporate accountability research, knowledge of the subject matter, and insight on regional disparities in the impact of tech companies are critical to the development of the RDR Index.
Research Fellows
Afef Abrougui, Farah Rasmi, Mila Bajic, Veszna Wessenauer
Contributing Researchers
Jiwon Son, Kyoungmi Oh, Michael Kowen, Peter Radosavljev
Special Thanks
This edition of the RDR Index is the first to be published under the banner of the World Benchmarking Alliance. Many colleagues at WBA and “friends of RDR” in the digital rights community shared our mission and supported our efforts along the way. Some of them include:
Aditi Rukhiyar, Alex Guy, Ana Gabriela Santana, Anita Dorett, Anna Lee Nabors, Anne Delaporte, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Blanca Civit Sarda, Gerbrand Haverkamp, Ilayda Eren, Iyanuoluwa Fatoba, Kelly Ross, Leesa Muirhead, Lilian Coral, Lourdes Montenegro, Nicholas Sewe, Oscar Montiel, Pauliina Murphy, Rebecca MacKinnon, Semia Parmenter, Tayrine Dias, and Zak Rogoff.
In addition, we are grateful to our many civil society partners who have led their own research projects inspired or informed by the RDR methodology. Their efforts exemplify what a sustainable, globally distributed community advancing corporate accountability can look like. Learn more about them here.
Design Concept and Graphics
Olivia Solis
Development and Production
Christo Buschek, Mitar Krivokapic, Uros Boric
Copyediting
Kriti Toshniwal
About Ranking Digital Rights
RDR is a research program at the World Benchmarking Alliance, working under WBA’s Digital Transformation team. We work to promote freedom of expression and privacy on the internet by creating global, human rights-based standards for companies to respect and protect users’ rights. We do this by assessing the transparency of the world’s most powerful technology companies on critical issues that affect these rights. The RDR Index is our flagship benchmark. We work with companies, advocates, researchers, investors, and policymakers to establish and advance global standards for corporate accountability.
For more about RDR’s vision, impact, and strategy, visit our website at https://rankingdigitalrights.org/
For more about World Benchmarking Alliance, visit https://www.worldbenchmarkingalliance.org/. Read more about the Digital Inclusion Benchmark, our sister benchmark assessing 200 companies, here.
Funders
We are grateful to our funders for their ongoing support for RDR’s work as well as their unwavering belief in the missions of RDR and WBA. They include:
We would also like to thank Internews and ARTICLE 19, whose partnership under the Greater Internet Freedom, Civic DEFENDERS, and Engaging Tech for Internet Freedom consortia played a significant role in our work over the past several years.
Contact Us
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info.digital@worldbenchmarkingalliance.org
Press Inquiries
press@worldbenchmarkingalliance.org
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0