ENCOURAGE USERS TO SPEAK FREELY

Promote diverse speech and speakers.

If your product or service allows users to interact with each other, it is in your best interest to encourage user expression. The more freedom your users have to express themselves freely, the more likely they are to interact deeply with your service, with lasting benefits to everyone involved.

ALLOW USERS TO ACCESS THE CONTENT THEY CHOOSE
Your users expect to be able to access the content they want. If they can’t do so and don’t understand why, they may express their outrage or simply take their business elsewhere. You can avoid this by making content available as a general rule.
Case Study

Zoom Tries to Blur its Own Background—Quietly Changes Terms of Service to Allow AI to Train on User Information

Zoom failed to provide its users control over their personal information when it quietly updated its terms of service, requiring users to sacrifice their privacy in order to fuel Zoom’s artificial intelligence program.

Zoom failed to provide its users control over their personal information when it quietly updated its terms of service, requiring users to sacrifice their privacy in order to fuel Zoom’s artificial intelligence program. Specifically, the new terms of service required users to agree to “grant Zoom a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license” for various purposes, including “machine learning, artificial intelligence, training, testing, improvement of the Services, Software, or Zoom’s other products, services, and software, or any combination thereof.” Users raised alarms and called on privacy advocates and legal experts to consider whether Zoom’s policy was acceptable in terms of consent, data privacy, and individual rights, with one user saying: “I'm afraid unless you give users the option to opt out of having their data used in training AI, we're going to have to boycott your product. Unless you can verify that video content itself is not used in training. This is horrible optics.” 

Case Study

Facebook Censors Expression of LGBTQ Love

Facebook has been criticized for disparities in its treatment of content by created by LGBTQ users.

Facebook has been criticized for disparities in its treatment of content by created by LGBTQ users. For example, in 2020, Facebook repeatedly rejected a band’s advertisement which featured an image of two women with their foreheads touching. Facebook labelled the content ‘adult content’ and ‘sexually explicit,’ but approved a similar ad portraying a heterosexual couple. Other LGBTQ creators have come forward with similar discriminatory experiences, leading users to feel targeted because of their identities. Civil rights organizations have called on platforms to “learn to behave like real allies and consider the impact their policies and practices will have on the very communities they claim to support.”

Case Study

Google Applauded for Championing First Amendment

Google was praised for “defending freedom” when it refused to comply with an order to remove the controversial “Innocence of Muslims” video from its services.

Google was praised for “defending freedom” when it refused to comply with an order to remove the controversial “Innocence of Muslims” video from its services. Google ultimately won a decision allowing it to keep the video online, leading “[e]veryone from technology companies to Hollywood to free speech advocates [to] breathe a sigh of relief.”

ALLOW USERS TO CONTROL THEIR RELATIONSHIPS AND INTERACTIONS WITH OTHERS
By allowing users to tailor your service to their needs, you help them create an experience that maximizes their enjoyment of your service. Offering tools that enable users to manage the people they interact with can help nurture positive connections and reduce the effects of harmful behavior. Instead of diverting resources on moderators or complicated algorithms, empower users to make their own decisions.
Case Study

League of Legends Praised for Re-Engineering Chat to Reduce Harassment

The developer behind the massively popular online multi-player game League of Legends reduced negative user interactions and received public praise after making simple changes to its chat system.

Facing a problem of “toxic” and abusive behavior, developer Riot Games came to a simple solution: make the chat feature opt-in for users. According to Riot, a week after the change was made “negative chat saw a decrease by 32.7 percent [and] positive chat went up, by 34.5 percent.” Riot was praised for effectively addressing its problems by “creating a simple hurdle to abusive behavior.”

Case Study

Etsy, YouTube, and Vimeo Commended for Encouraging Informal Resolutions

Rather than simply providing trademark holders with instructions on how to send formal takedown requests for user-generated content on their sites, Etsy, YouTube, and Vimeo each encourage rights holders and their representatives to contact alleged infringers and attempt to informally resolve a dispute before pursuing legal action.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation praised the companies for discouraging unnecessary legal disputes and “giv[ing] users a chance to understand and respond to threats against their own speech if necessary.”

ALLOW USERS TO USE THIRD-PARTY SOFTWARE
Users consistently express outrage when ISPs, platforms, and similar services interfere with their ability to use third-party software that does not disrupt the functioning of the service. You can avoid controversy and demonstrate your support for your users by giving them the freedom to safely communicate using whatever application or tool they choose.
Case Study

Facebook Hailed for Launch of Tor Portal

Facebook was applauded for enhancing user security when it launched its own “Tor hidden service” providing privacy- and security-conscious users an alternative way to reach its service. Facebook connected users running Tor software to a version of the site with extra safeguards for protecting users’ identities and their activity on site.

Facebook was applauded for enhancing user security when it launched its own “Tor hidden service” providing privacy- and security-conscious users an alternative way to reach its service. Facebook connected users running Tor software to a version of the site with extra safeguards for protecting users’ identities and their activity on site. Academics and the press embraced the new offering as a “first-of-its-kind” innovation and an “unalloyed good.”

Case Study

AT&T Accused of “Holding FaceTime Hostage”

AT&T triggered consumer and media outrage when it announced that it would only allow iPhone users to use the video chat app FaceTime on the carrier’s cellular data network if the customers purchased a shared data plan.

AT&T eventually changed its policy, but only after the company was subjected to a barrage of negative press and customer complaints, with the media accusing the company of “holding FaceTime hostage,” “slapping consumers in [the] face over FaceTime,” and carrying out “simple extortion.

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