Twitter under pressure. Photo by Quinn Dombrowski (CC-BY-SA-2.0)
This is the RADAR, Ranking Digital Rights’ newsletter. This special edition was sent on Jun 17, 2021. Subscribe here to get The RADAR by email.
US-based tech companies have long vowed to enforce their own content and data-collection rules, while also following the “law of the land” in every country where they operate. With the exceptions of countries that block their services altogether, this approach has allowed tech giants to remain accessible in most places, most of the time. But with powerful political actors worldwide increasingly using social media platforms to disseminate their views (whether fact or fiction) and occasionally running afoul of platform rules, this delicate balance of interests is being tested.
Recent events in both India and Nigeria have shown how company efforts to reduce disinformation and harmful speech on their platforms—paired with their relative lack of transparency in showing how they enforce content rules—can put their business operations at risk.
India’s new IT Rules, passed in February 2021, require “significant social media intermediaries” like Google and Facebook to introduce new measures on issues ranging from end-to-end encryption to locally-staffed grievance programs for content removal and related disputes.
While Facebook and Google both took measures to comply with the new rules before they went into force, Twitter held out. But after Indian security authorities came to Twitter’s offices in Delhi and Gurgaon, seeking to investigate Twitter’s decision to label a tweet (sent by a BJP party official) as “manipulated media,” the company vowed at the eleventh hour that it would “strive to comply with applicable law in India.” Read the Software Freedom Law Centre’s analysis of the 2021 IT Rules.
Meanwhile in Nigeria, Twitter removed a tweet from the official account of President Muhammadu Buhari that contained a veiled threat against Igbo people, who represent the third largest ethnic group in the country. The next day, Twitter was blocked nationwide and officials threatened to arrest anyone using the service via VPN.
Our colleagues at Paradigm Initiative have called out their government for violating Nigerians’ rights to freedom of expression, which are protected under both local and international law. They also have vowed to keep tweeting.
In both contexts, these dynamics beg critical questions: To what extent do companies actually follow local laws? And to what extent are they enforcing their own policies, in every country where they operate? Without robust transparency mechanisms, it’s hard to know.
Year after year, our research has shown that all the companies in the RDR Index have significant work to do when it comes to detailed transparency reporting on content policy enforcement and building robust remedy and appeal mechanisms for people wishing to contest a company’s decisions. Visit the 2020 RDR Index site to see our most recent findings.
TikTok is on the tightrope too—and we’re checking it out
In the US last week, President Biden revoked three Trump-era executive orders that attempted to ban both TikTok and WeChat (among other services) on national security grounds. Biden then introduced a new order that will set in motion a “rigorous, evidence-based analysis” of certain software products owned by foreign adversaries “that may pose an unacceptable risk to U.S. national security.”
The move puts TikTok back in the spotlight in Washington, and re-raises questions about whether the service’s 100+ million users in the US should be concerned about the company’s data privacy and security practices, given that its roots are in China.
This past spring, we’ve been digging into TikTok’s policies and practices in an effort to answer some of these questions, and explore others. Stay tuned for our findings, out in just a few weeks! If you’re curious to learn more, or to share your own insights on the company, get in touch.
Hey Big Tech, don’t leave us hanging
What’s one thing each company can do to improve its human rights record? In mid-May, we launched our annual joint campaign with Access Now and the Business and Human Rights Resource Center to pressure each of the 26 companies in the RDR Index to make one, single change to their policies or practices. Read our recommendations
So far, only three companies have responded: Kakao, Vodafone, and Verizon Media (owner of Yahoo mail). For the 23 other companies we wrote to, we can only assume that they’ve decided users’ human rights are not a high priority. We hope they’ll prove us wrong in the days to come.
Other campaigns we’re supporting:
- The Electronic Privacy Information Center is urging the Biden Administration to ensure that any new transatlantic data transfer deal will be coupled with legislation that reforms government surveillance practices and guarantees privacy. Read the letter.
- The Electronic Frontier Foundation is calling on Venmo and Paypal to publish regular transparency reports and provide meaningful notice to users before restricting their accounts. Read the letter.
- We also joined 175 civil society organizations, technologists, and experts to call for a global ban on biometric recognition technologies that can be used to identify and track people worldwide.
Celebrate Pride month with GLAAD’s Social Media Safety Index
We are proud to promote GLAAD’s first-ever baseline evaluation of the LGBTQ user safety experience across the social media landscape. This comprehensive new report compares key safety and security features of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok, drawing heavily on our indicators and 2020 RDR Index findings. Read the report.
RDR media hits
Politico: RDR Projects Director Ellery Biddle was quoted in a story about Google’s new agreement to build a cloud region in Israel, and how this might affect people’s rights, particularly Palestinians and Arab Israelis. “We’re pushing [Google] to be as transparent as possible about what they’re agreeing to do, how they’re going to treat peoples’ data, [and] what kinds of protections and due process mechanisms are in place to protect peoples’ privacy,” she said. Read via Politico
Digital Privacy News: Commenting on Google’s new approach to user data collection, RDR Senior Policy and Partnerships Manager Nathalie Maréchal said, “[Tech companies] have been making unfathomable amounts of money from monetizing data about internet users and selling advertising against it…They see that regulation is coming — and they’re hoping that by reforming their business a little bit, they’ll be able to stave off the threat of regulation.” Read via Digital Privacy News
Deutsche Welle Akademie: RDR Projects Director Ellery Biddle was featured in a podcast of Deutsche Welle Akademie’s Media and Information Literacy Expert Network (MILEN), speaking about digital censorship of independent and critical voices on major social media platforms. Listen via Spotify, Apple podcasts, Buzzsprout.
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