URL: https://rankingdigitalrights.org/bte25/executive-summary
The 2025 RDR Index: Big Tech Edition is the seventh iteration of our rankings, in which we evaluate 14 of the world’s largest digital platforms, encompassing 43 individual services, on their policies and practices related to corporate governance, freedom of expression, and privacy.
In this 2025 edition, we evaluated 43 digital services that people rely on in their daily lives, from AI assistants like Alexa and Siri, to messaging apps like WhatsApp and WeChat, to user-facing cloud and email services. The companies assessed control online information flows and the web's underlying infrastructure, which is used by more than 5.5 billion people worldwide.
The Good News: Overall, most companies’ scores have improved since the last RDR Index, although no company scored over 50 percent.
This year, we also looked at the total number of indicators on which each company improved and declined across the three measurement areas covered by our assessment—governance, freedom of expression and information, and privacy.
The Bad News:
- Significant declines in transparency
- The gears behind Big Tech's business model remain opaque
- Companies are yielding to government demands with limited transparency
- Companies are failing to tell us how they enforce their own policies