“The methodology, the way of thinking about human rights, digital rights, and corporate accountability—RDR has left an indelible mark that's going to continue to evolve through all kinds of research. It's had a huge impact on how investors think about these issues. No matter how RDR evolves from here, it's going to live on in really interesting ways. The impact is going to continue to spread in ways that will be hard to predict.”

Read the full interview with Rebecca MacKinnon

“For 10 years, with our rigorous research and reputable rankings, Ranking Digital Rights has successfully challenged the world’s most powerful digital platforms and telecom companies to uphold their commitments to respect and promote human rights. Nearly every company we rank has engaged with us and/or amended policies to meet the standards we’ve set. Not only that, our indicators and research methods are being integrated into benchmarks being developed by intergovernmental agencies, industry groups, civil society advocates, and impact investors globally. As we turn 10, RDR has become a digital public good, an accessible and essential tool in the fight to realize an internet that supports and sustains human rights.”

“With RDR, we were able to evaluate and assess the current state of digital rights in our countries and determine the important steps we need to take in order to improve the digital rights practices of the private sector. It was really convenient to work with RDR because of, first of all, the methodology and standards they are putting and, secondly, the expertise they were able to provide us with during the entire RDR research process.”

“The scientific rigor with which the RDR team analyzes company activities and substantiates their findings is simply impressive. RDR’s Corporate Accountability Index has helped us a lot in benchmarking and improving our policies and management systems, thus contributing to our common objective of promoting human rights in general and privacy and freedom of expression in particular.”

“RDR's impact is so powerful. The steady existence of such rigorous monitoring and external accountability has an enormous impact even as tech companies continue to fail to prioritize public safety in their products. Having a watchdog like RDR means that there is a respected force of outside accountability so that companies are to a greater degree pressed to be attentive to all of these concerns.”

“RDR and its team provides in-depth ICT company analysis as well as tech and human rights expertise that allows investors to assess the human rights performance of their ICT portfolio companies and to develop strategies to engage and hold companies accountable on real and potential digital rights risks. With detailed and comparative data on each company’s digital rights performance, investors are able to call out where a company's peers/competitors and/or the sector as a whole is doing better. This helps to drive the individual ICT company and the ICT sector as a whole to higher standards of respect for the digital rights of users and society.”