1. Introduction

The number of internet users worldwide has doubled since triumphant activists of the Arab Spring embraced social media platforms as liberators in 2011.¹³ Yet, since then, organizations that track global internet freedom, press freedom, and democracy have all reported alarming declines.¹⁴ Today, tech companies have come under much-deserved scrutiny for enabling practices that critics say threaten democracy. In April 2019 UK journalist Carole Cadwalladr even challenged the founders of some of the world’s most powerful internet companies to consider whether their social media platforms “have made free and fair elections a thing of the past.”¹⁵

While the internet and related technologies helped people circumvent traditional barriers to holding governments and powerful corporations accountable, they did not shatter as many walls as democracy and human rights activists once hoped and expected. Entirely new channels have been created for abusing power and committing crimes, in ways that we are still struggling to understand. In many places and on many issues, exercising and defending human rights has grown more difficult. Civil society is under attack and space for civic action is shrinking across much of the world—online and offline.¹⁶

Civil society depends on freedom of expression to research, expose, debate, and protest. Equally important is the ability to live and work without being subject to blanket surveillance that makes it impossible to investigate allegations of abuse, hold accountable those who abuse power and violate human rights, or build organizations and movements that challenge established power. As the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) make clear, governments have a primary duty to protect these rights alongside all other human rights, while companies have a responsibility to respect them throughout all aspects of their business over which they have control.¹⁷ Yet both are failing to protect or respect internet users’ freedom of expression or privacy rights in the most fundamental ways. As the World Wide Web Foundation pointed out in November 2018: “Over 1.2 billion internet users live in countries where net neutrality is not protected, and more than 1.5 billion people live in countries with no comprehensive law on personal data protection, leaving them particularly vulnerable to increasingly common incidents involving breaches of personal data.”¹⁸

Meanwhile, many governments are attempting to hold companies responsible when internet platforms and services are used to inspire, organize, and plan numerous unspeakable acts of hate and terror. The challenge is how to do so without censoring and surveilling billions of people at the same time. The problem is exacerbated by what the Internet Society describes as “consolidation in the internet economy” at many levels: from provision of internet access, to cloud infrastructure, to web applications and platforms.¹⁹ Increasingly, the design choices, business models, and policy decisions of a small handful of companies are shaping political outcomes, livelihoods, and even whether some people live or die, to a degree that can only be described as shocking to those affected—and in many cases even to the companies themselves.

Diversity and choice at all layers of the global information ecosystem are essential for an internet that supports and sustains democracy and human rights. Important policy debates are now underway about how to mitigate, stop, and even reverse the trend toward consolidation that results in less choice over how we access information or what platforms we use for public discourse. Such concentration of power is especially insidious when companies are not demonstrating a clear commitment to building an internet that supports and sustains human rights.

As the Mozilla Foundation’s latest Internet Health Report underscores, the health of the internet is at a critical juncture, but the future is up to everyone. Everybody who uses the internet needs to understand the power dynamics at play in the manufacture, design, and operations of the products and services we depend upon.²⁰ In November 2018, on the thirtieth anniversary of the creation of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee called for a new Contract for the Web “with clear and tough responsibilities for those who have the power to make it better.”²¹

We could not agree more. In fact, since 2013, Ranking Digital Rights (RDR) has been working with a global network of research and advocacy partners to develop clear and tough but achievable standards of commitment, disclosure, and practice for the world’s most powerful internet, mobile ecosystem, and telecommunications companies. The RDR Corporate Accountability Index tracks whether and how companies are disclosing commitments, policies, and practices affecting users’ freedom of expression and privacy. For the 2019 RDR Index, we have evaluated 24 companies against 35 indicators examining different aspects of their governance, policies, and practices.

The RDR Index data can be used by civil society advocates, investors, policymakers, and companies themselves to identify where specific companies fall short in protecting users’ rights and how they can improve. It can also be used as a tool to show where law and regulation need to be be improved or reformed. Some regulations are essential for protecting internet users’ human rights, most notably the European Union’s new data protection rules. Yet in too many countries, governments are forcing companies to commit or facilitate censorship or surveillance in violation of internet users’ rights. For this reason, the 2019 RDR Index report features more detailed recommendations for governments than were offered in past reports.

People have a right to know and companies have a responsibility to show. The RDR Index is most fundamentally a benchmark of how well companies are meeting their responsibility to respect users’ rights. If people lack the information necessary to understand how state and non-state actors exert power through digital platforms and services, it is impossible not only to protect human rights—but to sustain open and democratic societies. Transparency is essential in order for people to know when users’ freedom of expression or privacy rights are violated either directly by—or indirectly through—companies’ platforms and services, let alone identify who should be held responsible.

Some leading companies are taking seriously their responsibility to respect human rights and have done much to improve since the first RDR Index was published in November 2015. We aim to highlight the success of companies that show that they understand how the protection of internet users’ human rights strengthens the “shared space” upon which they and their customers depend.²² It is equally important to ensure that companies are held accountable for failing to meet basic standards for respecting users’ human rights.

A long and difficult road lies ahead before coming close to the vision we share with many others: an internet that supports and sustains human rights. Nonetheless, the 2019 RDR Index findings do offer hope. We have seen that when companies decide to improve their respect for internet users’ rights, they can.

1.1 How to read this report

This report summarizes and presents the key findings from 2019 RDR Index research. Chapter 2 presents an overview of the most notable results and changes. Chapters 3-5 provide in-depth examinations of the findings of the three RDR Index categories: Governance, Freedom of Expression, and Privacy.

All three chapters include recommendations for companies and for governments. This year we are making more detailed government recommendations than in the past. Chapter 6 offers suggested questions for investors to ask companies. The Appendix provides further details about the methodology and research process. Company report cards for each of the 24 companies are offered separately as interactive web pages, as well as PDFs that can be downloaded and printed.

1.2 Explore the data and details

While this report highlights some of the main findings from the RDR Index data, it does not analyze all of the results. To view and download the full dataset, which details how every company scored on every indicator and element, and by each service, please visit the 2019 RDR Index website at: rankingdigitalrights.org/index2019/download.

1.3 Beyond the RDR Index

The 2019 RDR Index covers 24 of the world’s most powerful internet, mobile ecosystem, and telecommunications companies. It excludes many companies and services that are important to people in specific countries and regions. Because our methodology and indicators are openly available online, researchers in a range of countries and cities have begun to apply the RDR Index methodology to companies that are most relevant to them. We have compiled a list of the projects that have so far published their results: rankingdigitalrights.org/adaptations.

1.4 Beyond 2019

This report is the fourth iteration of the RDR Index since 2015. Indicators used for this and previous iterations of the RDR Index focus primarily on the freedom of expression and privacy harms that can occur to individuals as a result of their use of a company’s product, service, or device. However, internet, mobile ecosystem, and telecommunications companies can also endanger human rights indirectly, or contribute to the violation of the rights of entire communities or categories of people—as revealed by journalists, activists, and scholars over the past several years. Some of these harms can be traced back to targeted advertising business models, while others relate to the use of emerging technologies such as machine learning, algorithms, and artificial intelligence.

As a result, we plan to expand the RDR Index methodology to reflect some of the tougher problems that are prompting regulatory responses: hate speech, incitement to violence, live streamed acts of violence, disinformation campaigns, and more. We have already begun the process of further developing and revising the methodology to address the rapidly evolving, increasingly complex human rights threats that internet users—and their communities—face. Our work to expand and revise the methodology will continue into 2020. The fifth RDR Index will be published in 2021 with an expanded methodology and scope, following an extensive global consultation and research process.

To read more about our methodology development, see: rankingdigitalrights.org/methodology-development/2021-revisions

Footnotes