Social Media User’s Bill of Rights

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Came across this today, which seems to be gathering a body of support. I like the sentiments; pity it’s not enforceable!

Joseph Smarr, Marc Canter, Robert Scoble, and Michael Arrington have authored a bill of rights for users of the social web. The bill states:

We publicly assert that all users of the social web are entitled to certain fundamental rights, specifically:

Ownership of their own personal information, including:
- their own profile data
- the list of people they are connected to
- the activity stream of content they create;
Control of whether and how such personal information is shared with others; and
Freedom to grant persistent access to their personal information to trusted external sites.

Sites supporting these rights shall:

Allow their users to syndicate their own profile data, theirfriends list, and the data that’s shared with them via the service,using a persistent URL or API token and open data formats;
Allow their users to syndicate their own stream of activity outside the site;
Allow their users to link from their profile pages to external identifiers in a public way; and
Allow their users to discover who else they know is also on theirsite, using the same external identifiers made available for lookupwithin the service.

About Post Author

Stephen Dale

I’m a life-long learner with an insatiable curiosity about life. I love travel, good food, and good company. I’m happy to share what I know with others….even the interesting stuff! My outlook on life is pretty well captured in this quote from a book about the legend of King Arthur: “The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.” ― T.H. White, The Once and Future King So much to learn, so little time!

steve.dale@gmail.com

http://stephendale.uk