Twitter, Inc. 50%

OVERALL – 50%

Among Internet companies in the Index, Twitter came in fourth overall behind Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. Twitter executives have long trumpeted the company’s role as a tool for individual empowerment. The company declares that its mission is “To give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.” On October 5, 2015, Twitter’s co-founder and newly appointed CEO Jack Dorsey declared in a tweet: “Twitter stands for freedom of expression. We stand for speaking truth to power. And we stand for empowering dialogue.” Our research indicates that Twitter is indeed a leader in freedom of expression and very competitive on its concrete policies and practices that affect users’ privacy. However when it comes to demonstrating governance and oversight, internal accountability, and institutionalization of its commitments at the corporate level, the company falls short of its peers, bringing down its overall score.

COMMITMENT – 35%

On publicly articulated commitments and disclosed efforts to implement those commitments, Twitter came in sixth, behind Kakao and substantially behind the other U.S.-based Internet companies. Company commitments and executive statements related to freedom of expression and privacy are scattered around the company website, blog posts, and Twitter feeds of individual executives and departments. This makes it difficult for a specialized researcher, let alone a general user, to form a clear picture of executive commitment and responsibility without help from company employees who can point to the location of specific blog posts and tweets.

Throughout Twitter’s disclosure, there is no evidence of board oversight on matters related to freedom of expression and privacy (C2). In contrast to many of its peers, Twitter publishes no information about whether it conducts employee training on freedom of expression or privacy (C3). Information about its internal whistleblower program appears to focus on user privacy but not freedom of expression (C3). The company does not disclose whether it conducts human rights impact assessments (C4). While it engages with stakeholders (C5), it does not participate in a multi-stakeholder organization in which civil society, responsible investors, and academics can hold the company accountable for its practices. Twitter’s mechanisms for grievance and remedy (C6) do not stand out among the company’s U.S.-based peers.

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION – 58%

Twitter is a relatively strong performer on Freedom of Expression, ranking third behind Google and closely behind number two, Kakao. Twitter’s terms of service are exemplary in their clarity and accessibility (F1). The company could further improve its performance if it takes steps to bring the policies of Vine, its video service, into closer alignment with the core Twitter service. In some cases, the company’s public disclosures did not clarify whether they included Vine. Because company scores in this category were calculated as an average of the services evaluated, a very high score for the core Twitter service was sometimes diluted by a low score for Vine.

Transparency about requests for content restriction: The core Twitter service is a leader on transparency reporting related to content removal and restriction. For example, Twitter forwards content removal requests to ChillingEffects.org, which publishes these requests as part of an online repository of specific requests for content restriction that Internet services receive. By doing so, Twitter increases the broader public’s ability to hold both Twitter and the senders of content restriction requests to account.

On disclosure of data about government requests to restrict content (F7), the core Twitter service scored higher than any other company except Google. While a company representative told our research team in private communications that the company’s transparency report on government requests for content restriction includes Vine, that information is not available to users who lack personal connections to company staff. Such information does not meet the Index methodology’s requirements for consideration, and consequently, Vine received no credit on that indicator. Some other companies in the Index have done a better job of clarifying what their transparency reports do or do not include. Twitter’s Index score could rise significantly in the future if the company offers similar clarity.

PRIVACY – 51%

On privacy-related disclosures, Twitter clusters closely with the top four Internet companies, though much room for improvement remains.

Handling of user information: Similar to its peers, Twitter’s disclosures related to the handling of user information suffered from lack of clarity and organization (see Section 4.3). For example, its disclosure of what information Twitter shares with third parties (P4) failed to clearly define or explain the use of terms such as “your information” and “private personal information.”

As discussed in the Freedom of Expression category above, an easy way for Twitter to boost its Index score on privacy would be to bring its policies and disclosures for Vine into alignment with those for the core Twitter service. If not for Vine, Twitter would have been tied in first place with Google for enabling users to access their own information (P6).

More positively, Twitter was a leader in some regards: It earned the highest score in the Index on disclosure of how long it retains user information (P7). On disclosure about the collection of user information from third parties using web-tracking technologies (P8), Twitter is the clear leader. Its core Twitter service is the only service in the Index to support the “Do Not Track” standard that allows users to opt-out of certain types of web tracking.

Transparency about requests for user data: Twitter performed better than any other company in the Index on privacy-related “transparency reporting.” It publishes more comprehensive data than other companies about third-party requests for user information (P11). Twitter was very competitive with its peers on disclosure about its process for responding to third-party requests for user information (P9), and on notifying users about third-party requests for user information (P10).

Security: Vine’s score was markedly worse than the core Twitter service on security standards (P12), and on practices to inform and educate users about cyber threats (P14). The company lost points for failing to encrypt users’ private communications (P13) – in the case of Twitter that means the service’s “direct message” function.