[D66] Declaration of Digital Independence

[A.OUT]

https://larrysanger.org/2019/06/declaration-of-digital-independence/


Declaration of Digital Independence
June 26, 2019
|In Theory, Internet, Social
|By Larry Sanger

    Version 1.3 (June 29, 2019; version history)

    See also: Social Media Strike! — FAQ about the project to
decentralize social media — Resources

Humanity has been contemptuously used by vast digital empires. Thus it
is now necessary to replace these empires with decentralized networks of
independent individuals, as in the first decades of the Internet. As our
participation has been voluntary, no one doubts our right to take this
step. But if we are to persuade as many people as possible to join
together and make reformed networks possible, we should declare our
reasons for wanting to replace the old.

We declare that we have unalienable digital rights, rights that define
how information that we individually own may or may not be treated by
others, and that among these rights are free speech, privacy, and
security. Since the proprietary, centralized architecture of the
Internet at present has induced most of us to abandon these rights,
however reluctantly or cynically, we ought to demand a new system that
respects them properly. The difficulty and divisiveness of wholesale
reform means that this task is not to be undertaken lightly. For years
we have approved of and even celebrated enterprise as it has profited
from our communication and labor without compensation to us. But it has
become abundantly clear more recently that a callous, secretive,
controlling, and exploitative animus guides the centralized networks of
the Internet and the corporations behind them.

The long train of abuses we have suffered makes it our right, even our
duty, to replace the old networks. To show what train of abuses we have
suffered at the hands of these giant corporations, let these facts be
submitted to a candid world.

They have practiced in-house moderation in keeping with their
executives’ notions of what will maximize profit, rather than allowing
moderation to be performed more democratically and by random members of
the community.

They have banned, shadow-banned, throttled, and demonetized both users
and content based on political considerations, exercising their enormous
corporate power to influence elections globally.

They have adopted algorithms for user feeds that highlight the most
controversial content, making civic discussion more emotional and
irrational and making it possible for foreign powers to exercise an
unmerited influence on elections globally.

They have required agreement to terms of service that are impossible for
ordinary users to understand, and which are objectionably vague in ways
that permit them to legally defend their exploitative practices.

They have marketed private data to advertisers in ways that no one would
specifically assent to.

They have failed to provide clear ways to opt out of such marketing schemes.

They have subjected users to such terms and surveillance even when users
pay them for products and services.

They have data-mined user content and behavior in sophisticated and
disturbing ways, learning sometimes more about their users than their
users know about themselves; they have profited from this hidden but
personal information.

They have avoided using strong, end-to-end encryption when users have a
right to expect total privacy, in order to retain access to user data.

They have amassed stunning quantities of user data while failing to
follow sound information security practices, such as encryption; they
have inadvertently or deliberately opened that data to both illegal
attacks and government surveillance.

They have unfairly blocked accounts, posts, and means of funding on
political or religious grounds, preferring the loyalty of some users
over others.

They have sometimes been too ready to cooperate with despotic
governments that both control information and surveil their people.

They have failed to provide adequate and desirable options that users
may use to guide their own experience of their services, preferring to
manipulate users for profit.

They have failed to provide users adequate tools for searching their own
content, forcing users rather to employ interfaces insultingly
inadequate for the purpose.

They have exploited users and volunteers who freely contribute data to
their sites, by making such data available to others only via paid
application program interfaces and privacy-violating terms of service,
failing to make such freely-contributed data free and open source, and
disallowing users to anonymize their data and opt out easily.

They have failed to provide adequate tools, and sometimes any tools, to
export user data in a common data standard.

They have created artificial silos for their own profit; they have
failed to provide means to incorporate similar content, served from
elsewhere, as part of their interface, forcing users to stay within
their networks and cutting them off from family, friends, and associates
who use other networks.

They have profited from the content and activity of users, often without
sharing any of these profits with the users.

They have treated users arrogantly as a fungible resource to be
exploited and controlled rather than being treated respectfully, as
free, independent, and diverse partners.

We have begged and pleaded, complained, and resorted to the law. The
executives of the corporations must be familiar with these common
complaints; but they acknowledge them publicly only rarely and
grudgingly. The ill treatment continues, showing that most of such
executives are not fit stewards of the public trust.

The most reliable guarantee of our privacy, security, and free speech is
not in the form of any enterprise, organization, or government, but
instead in the free agreement among free individuals to use common
standards and protocols. The vast power wielded by social networks of
the early 21st century, putting our digital rights in serious jeopardy,
demonstrates that we must engineer new—but old-fashioned—decentralized
networks that make such clearly dangerous concentrations of power
impossible.

Therefore, we declare our support of the following principles.

Principles of Decentralized Social Networks

    We free individuals should be able to publish our data freely,
without having to answer to any corporation.

    We declare that we legally own our own data; we possess both legal
and moral rights to control our own data.

    Posts that appear on social networks should be able to be served,
like email and blogs, from many independent services that we
individually control, rather than from databases that corporations
exclusively control or from any central repository.

    Just as no one has the right to eavesdrop on private conversations
in homes without extraordinarily good reasons, so also the privacy
rights of users must be preserved against criminal, corporate, and
governmental monitoring; therefore, for private content, the protocols
must support strong, end-to-end encryption and other good privacy practices.

    As is the case with the Internet domain name system, lists of
available user feeds should be restricted by technical standards and
protocols only, never according to user identity or content.

    Social media applications should make available data input by the
user, at the user’s sole discretion, to be distributed by all other
publishers according to common, global standards and protocols, just as
are email and blogs, with no publisher being privileged by the network
above another. Applications with idiosyncratic standards violate their
users’ digital rights.

    Accordingly, social media applications should aggregate posts from
multiple, independent data sources as determined by the user, and in an
order determined by the user’s preferences.

    No corporation, or small group of corporations, should control the
standards and protocols of decentralized networks, nor should there be a
single brand, owner, proprietary software, or Internet location
associated with them, as that would constitute centralization.

    Users should expect to be able to participate in the new networks,
and to enjoy the rights above enumerated, without special technical
skills. They should have very easy-to-use control over privacy, both
fine- and coarse-grained, with the most private messages encrypted
automatically, and using tools for controlling feeds and search results
that are easy for non-technical people to use.

We hold that to embrace these principles is to return to the sounder and
better practices of the earlier Internet and which were, after all, the
foundation for the brilliant rise of the Internet. Anyone who opposes
these principles opposes the Internet itself. Thus we pledge to code,
design, and participate in newer and better networks that follow these
principles, and to eschew the older, controlling, and soon to be
outmoded networks.

We, therefore, the undersigned people of the Internet, do solemnly
publish and declare that we will do all we can to create decentralized
social networks; that as many of us as possible should distribute,
discuss, and sign their names to this document; that we endorse the
preceding statement of principles of decentralization; that we will
judge social media companies by these principles; that we will
demonstrate our solidarity to the cause by abandoning abusive networks
if necessary; and that we, both users and developers, will advance the
cause of a more decentralized Internet.