Key Findings From The 2022 RDR Big Tech Scorecard

U.S. companies still dominate the top half of our ranking, with Korea’s Kakao tying Apple for 6th place.

The order of the top seven companies in our ranking did not change since last year. All companies except Google, which declined slightly, made at least small net improvements to their policies affecting privacy and freedom of expression. Yahoo—formerly Verizon Media, and now the only company we rank that is not publicly traded since its acquisition by private equity firm Apollo Global Management—gained almost three points, thanks to improved security and data breach policies (see below for more on data breaches). 

Microsoft also disclosed more about content governance, releasing data for the first time on content it restricted based on its own rules. Its Bing search engine disclosed more data about how it moderates advertising content than any other service we ranked. But Microsoft’s score remained almost stagnant because its email service, Outlook, stopped receiving credit for encrypting user communication with unique keys. The document disclosing this practice became too old to use. The addition of LinkedIn, with its weak policies to safeguard freedom of expression, also put a damper on Microsoft’s total score.

As mentioned, Google, number four this year, was notable as the only company posting an overall decline, the result of fewer disclosures in both privacy and freedom of expression. It removed a commitment to notify users when they search for restricted content. The search giant also distinguished itself again this year as the only U.S. company that did not engage with RDR in our company feedback process. The company does, however, seek to engage with lawmakers in Brussels, earning the top spot in the number of lobbyists who have engaged with European Commission officials. It has used tactics so questionable that its CEO Sundar Pichai has apologized for them.

Though Meta (formerly Facebook) released a new human rights policy, it failed to commit fully to upholding international human rights in its development and use of algorithmic systems. The company also failed to make public how its algorithms moderate advertisements.

Meanwhile, Apple, historically stronger in privacy than freedom of expression in our ranking, expanded its reporting on content moderation and enforcement of its App Store rules.

Tying with Apple, Kakao is the only non-U.S. company in the top half of the Big Tech Scorecard. Following criticism over a rogue chatbot on the KakaoTalk messenger, it launched a board-level committee to oversee issues including privacy and freedom of expression. 

The Chinese and Russian companies we rank, along with Samsung and Amazon, round out the bottom half of the Scorecard—with some posting significant score improvements.

The Chinese companies were among the least transparent platforms, but still showed improvement, in part as a result of Beijing’s sweeping crackdown on the once freewheeling sector. To respond to the rapidly changing regulatory environment, both Baidu and Tencent provided more information about their governance processes, which led to notable score improvements in the governance category. In complying with China’s new Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL), Tencent, Baidu, and Alibaba provided users with the ability to opt out of the algorithmic recommendation systems of their major services. They made no other significant gains through legal compliance, because RDR’s human rights-based indicators set higher standards than those of the PIPL.

As in previous years, the Chinese companies kept silent about how they handle government requests and published only superficial data about content removed and accounts restricted. E-commerce platform Alibaba shared the least about its governance, and Baidu disclosed the least about its policies and practices affecting freedom of expression. None of three companies offered much about whether they conduct human rights due diligence.

Operating in an increasingly challenging political and regulatory landscape, Russian companies Yandex and VK continued to lack transparency on key issues affecting the rights of their users. Though they ranked eighth and ninth, respectively, Yandex outperformed VK in all categories, thanks to its stronger human rights commitment and internal mechanisms for implementing its commitments to freedom of expression and information and to privacy. It was also the most improved this year among all platforms. Both companies performed poorly on human rights due diligence. They each disclosed critical information on their security-related standards but shared very little about how they handle user information.

Smartphone giant Samsung, whose Android mobile ecosystem we evaluate, continued to fall behind its Korean peer Kakao (and most other platforms). Both companies made commitments to respect users’ freedom of expression and privacy, but scored poorly on human rights due diligence. Notably, Samsung earns no credit on more indicators than any other company, and ranks last in our privacy category. It discloses nothing about how it handles third-party requests and publishes no data on such requests.

Kakao notably outperformed Samsung on freedom of expression, thanks to its transparency reporting on its rules enforcement, government demands, and private requests to restrict content and accounts. In the privacy category, both had strong disclosures about their data collection and sharing practices, but disclosed nothing on data inference. Kakao, however, was far more transparent about its handling of government demands for user information.

Despite a respectable four-point score improvement, Amazon once again came in last, tying with Tencent. The e-commerce company bolstered its management oversight of data privacy, and disclosed that it conducts security audits for its Alexa voice assistant, but still fell far short of our standards in all three categories. Like its Chinese counterparts, it published no information about government demands it received to restrict content and accounts.