Ranking Digital Rights: Companies Register Some Improvements, But All Still Fall Short

A new Ranking Digital Rights (RDR) Corporate Accountability Index was released in late May 2019.  The 2019 RDR Index ranked 24 companies on 35 indicators across three categories evaluating their disclosure of commitments, policies, and practices affecting freedom of expression and privacy.  David Kaye, UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, has said that “RDR’s comprehensive, multi-disciplinary methodology sets a gold standard for the fact-finding required to assess the human rights impact of the companies that create, manage and facilitate vast digital networks and spaces.”

The RDR Corporate Accountability Index evaluates policies of the parent company, operating company, and those of selected services (depending on company structure).  US-based companies evaluated include Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Verizon, AT&T, Google, and Apple. 

Most companies improved scores in at least one area -- largely driven by stricter privacy laws in the EU.  But even the leading companies fell short in key areas.  Few scored higher than 50 percent, failing to even meet basic transparency standards, leaving users worldwide in the dark about how their personal information is harvested and used (often for profit) by these corporate entities .

In particular, RDR reports that companies fell short in the following areas:

• Privacy: Companies still do not adequately inform people about all the ways user information is collected and shared, with whom, and why.

• Expression: As companies struggle to curb extremism, hate speech, and disinformation, most lacked transparency about how they police content or respond to government demands.

• Governance: Most companies failed to anticipate and manage privacy and expression risks caused by their business models, and by the deployment of new technologies.Additional analysis of the RDR Index is available here.