Amazon Ranks Last in 2020 Ranking Digital Rights Corporate Accountability Index; Twitter Takes Top Spot

Washington, D.C. — The world’s most powerful tech companies are failing to respect and protect the rights of billions of internet users worldwide, according to the 2020 Ranking Digital Rights (RDR) Corporate Accountability Index, released today. The 2020 RDR Index evaluated 26 digital platforms and telecommunications companies, including Apple, AT&T, Facebook, Tencent, and Vodafone. Combined, these companies serve over half of the world’s 4.6 billion internet users, with a combined market cap of nearly USD 11 trillion.

For the first time in 2020, the RDR Corporate Accountability Index ranked e-commerce giant Amazon in the digital platform category, where it ranked dead last. Amazon is substantially less transparent about policies and practices affecting users’ human rights compared to other major U.S. platforms. It disclosed very little about how it handles or secures user information, and nothing about its data retention policies, despite its deep reliance on user data to fuel its business model.

Watch our 2020 RDR Index launch here.

Other company highlights include:

• Twitter earned first place in this year’s ranking of digital platforms, scoring 53 points, due to its comparatively strong transparency about its rules on user-generated content, ad content, and ad targeting.
• Google and Facebook both fell in the ranking, earning fourth and fifth places, respectively, among digital platforms. Their business models depend heavily on targeted advertising and algorithmic amplification of content – drivers of disinformation and extremist content. But they disclose little to users about how these systems work.
• Telefónica led among telecommunications companies for the second year in a row, due to its robust human rights commitments in governance. Vodafone remained in second place, and AT&T in third, consistent with their rankings in 2019.

Ranking Digital Rights, an independent global research program at New America in Washington, D.C., evaluates companies on their publicly disclosed policies and practices affecting users’ freedom of expression and privacy. Now in its fifth year, the RDR Index has seen companies commit to protecting users’ rights in greater numbers each year. But in 2020, when concern about tech companies’ unchecked power to shape public discourse feels higher than ever, few scored more than 50 out of 100 possible points on a set of basic standards of policy disclosure and practice. Across the globe, companies are leaving users in the dark about how their personal information is collected, protected, and used to drive profits.

“When companies don’t assess the risks of their products or explain how their technologies work, ordinary users are the ones who pay,” says RDR Director Jessica Dheere.

“Users are the ones being served sensationalist propaganda instead of accurate information that they need. They are the ones having their content taken down because algorithms don't understand context. And it’s their data out there for sale to the highest bidder because of an unreported data breach.”

Also new in the 2020 RDR Corporate Accountability Index: Disturbing findings on algorithms and targeted advertising

Are companies safeguarding users’ rights when developing and deploying targeted advertising and algorithmic systems? RDR introduced new standards on these issues in 2020, only to find that nearly all companies in the index failed to disclose basic policy information about how they use these technologies.

We know that algorithms and ad-targeting systems are a key driver of disinformation and extremism online. Yet most companies evaluated showed almost no transparency with regard to these systems, and had no clear accountability mechanisms in place to prevent the cascade of harms to human rights and the public interest that are occurring as a result. Companies across the index declined by an average of five percentage points due to these new standards.

See the full results from the 2020 RDR Index here: https://rankingdigitalrights.org/index2020.

Highlights from our report:

• Key findings: Companies are improving in principle, but failing in practice
• Explore our data: See how each company scored on our standards
• Context before code: Protecting human rights in a state of emergency
• Moving fast and breaking us all: Big Tech’s unaccountable algorithms
• China’s tech giants can change: But the state is still the number one stakeholder

Our research and experts have been cited in The Guardian, WIRED, FiveThirtyEight, Al Jazeera and many other media. Meet our team.

To speak to an expert, please contact us at comms@rankingdigitalrights.org.

ABOUT RANKING DIGITAL RIGHTS: Ranking Digital Rights is a non-profit research program housed at New America’s Open Technology Institute. Previous RDR Indexes were released in November 2015, March 2017, April 2018, and May 2019. For the full 2020 RDR Index data and analysis, report cards for each company, and raw data set, please visit: https://rankingdigitalrights.org/index2020

ABOUT THE OPEN TECHNOLOGY INSTITUTE: The Open Technology Institute works at the intersection of technology and policy to ensure that every community has equitable access to digital technology and its benefits. We promote universal access to communications technologies that are both open and secure, using a multidisciplinary approach that brings together advocates, researchers, organizers, and innovators. To learn more, please visit us online at www.newamerica.org/oti and on Twitter @OTI.

ABOUT NEW AMERICA: New America is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy institute dedicated to renewing America in the digital age through big ideas, technological innovation and creative engagement with broad audiences. To learn more, please visit us online at www.newamerica.org or follow us on Twitter @NewAmerica.