
Contract for the Web - maaaats
https://contractfortheweb.org/?2019
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salawat
Irony: the contract for the web, while giving you the option to control your
cookie settings at first glance just drops to a prompt that all cookies are
strictly necessary, so you should just accept them, because they are a request
for service.

No wonder Google and Facebook signed on so quick! They'd be happy to give the
appearance of accommodating to grant you control, whilst in reality nudging
you right back toward the typical exploitation path.

Furthermore, some of the principles seem to be self-defeating. "Gender
responsive" and most of the principles that have to do with "systemically
underserved groups" assume the capability to granularly determine or "target"
those in that group; something that defeats the purpose of not being able to
isolate one group or another from service. This is one of those cases where
setting access constraints on a geographic basis would actually be helpful, as
it removes any semblance of an individual's identifying information or
circumstance (except geographic location) from the equation.

Will update as I get further, just got through the government section, and I'm
liking what I see in general, but I still feel that there is a heck of a lot
of concession in the form of implicitly playing exploitative behavior by large
actors getting enshrined in this thing.

Edit:

Under "Keep the Internet available all the time", there are the typical carve
outs for trying to allow content takedowns in ways grounded in law, but
consistent with human rights without any concession to any of the problems
such a carve out creates. See copyright trolling, DMCA abuse, et al.

Government protection and establishment of data rights is actually pretty
good.

The Companies section is basically a regurgitation of the Government
principles with slightly modified language. No comments offered with regards
to multi-nationals, or any responsibility to not act in a parasitic manner to
the user base at large. Again, I can see Google and Facebook buying into this,
because legalistically speaking they can say they've already done most
everything, and there is no implied commitment to actually do or remedy any of
the socially unhealthy things they engage in as business verticals.

Principle 6 has the potential to become problematic, as what is the "best" and
"worst" of humanity changes with the beholder. I.e. businesswise, the worst
aspects of human nature drive the best KPI's; so from their point of view
given massive blinders, they'd be doing exactly what they are supposed to on
the tin.

The Citizen section is okay; though 8 still enshrined traceability of groups.
Building that in just seems to be championing the process of using web-based
metadata collection as a viable course of doing business, and does nothing to
condemn targeting of specific groups.

