The voting so far

The people working on a Social Network Users’ Bill of Rights have done another interesting eThing:  rather than requiring people to express support or rejection holus-bolus they've decided to let us vote on the individual rights proposed.  Further, Jon Pincus has shared the early results on his Liminal States blog.  He writes:

The SXSW panel got a decent amount of attention, including article by Helen A. S. Popkin’s Vote on your ‘Social Network Users’ Bill of Rights’ on MSNBC’s Technolog, Kim Cameron’s post on the Identity Weblog, and a brief link from Mark Sullivan of PC World. Here’s the voting so far

  1. 41 yes 0 no Honesty: Honor your privacy policy and terms of service
  2. 41 yes 0 no Clarity: Make sure that policies, terms of service, and settings are easy to find and understand
  3. 41 yes 0 no Freedom of speech: Do not delete or modify my data without a clear policy and justification
  4. 33 yes 4 no Empowerment : Support assistive technologies and universal accessibility
  5. 35 yes 2 no Self-protection: Support privacy-enhancing technologies
  6. 37 yes 3 no Data minimization: Minimize the information I am required to provide and share with others
  7. 39 yes 1 no Control: Let me control my data, and don’t facilitate sharing it unless I agree first
  8. 39 yes 1 no Predictability: Obtain my prior consent before significantly changing who can see my data.
  9. 38 yes 0 no Data portability: Make it easy for me to obtain a copy of my data
  10. 39 yes 0 no Protection: Treat my data as securely as your own confidential data unless I choose to share it, and notify me if it is compromised
  11. 36 yes 2 no Right to know: Show me how you are using my data and allow me to see who and what has access to it.
  12. 24 yes 13 no Right to self-define: Let me create more than one identity and use pseudonyms. Do not link them without my permission.
  13. 35 yes 1 no Right to appeal: Allow me to appeal punitive actions
  14. 37 yes 1 no Right to withdraw: Allow me to delete my account, and remove my data

So it’s in general overwhelmingly positive: five rights are unanimous, and another eight at 89% or higher.  The one exception: the right to self-define, currently at about 65%.  As I said in a comment on the earlier thread, this right is vital for people like whistleblowers, domestic violence victims, political dissidents, closeted LGBTQs.   I wonder whether the large minority of people who don’t think it matters are thinking about it from those perspectives.

The voting continues at http://SNUBillOfRights.com.  Please voice your opinion!

The voting on individual rights is still light.  Right 12 clearly stands out as one which needs discussion.

I expect most people just take a quick look at the bill as a whole, say “Yeah, that makes sense” and move on.  The “pro” and “against” pages at facebook ran about 500 to 1 in favor of the Bill when I looked a few days ago.  In this sense the Bill is certainly right on track. 

But the individual rights need to be examined very carefully by at least some of us.  I'll return to Jon's comments on right 12 when I can make some time to set out my ideas.

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Kim Cameron

Work on identity.