URL: https://www.techdirt.com/2025/07/17/we-deserve-better-a-new-social-media-bill-of-rights/
Today, if you run a Facebook Group with thousands of members, you have no real authority – your community exists at the whim of corporate policies you cannot influence. This is fundamentally at odds with how real-world communities have always operated. Your local gardening club, bowling league, or neighborhood association has democratic processes for leadership and decision-making. Why should our digital communities be any different?
I believe that the time has come for a new Social Media Bill of Digital Rights. Just as the original Bill of Rights protected individual freedoms from government overreach, we need fundamental protections for our digital communities from corporate control and surveillance capitalism.
- The right to privacy & security: The ability to communicate and organize without fear of surveillance or exploitation.
- The right to own and control your identity: People and their communities must own their digital identities, connections and data. And, as the owner of an account, you can exercise the right to be forgotten.
- The right to choose and understand algorithms (transparency): Choosing the algorithms that shape your interactions: no more black box systems optimizing for engagement at the expense of community well-being.
- The right to community self-governance: Crucially, communities of users need the right to self govern, setting their own rules for behavior which are contextually relevant to their community. (Note: this does not preclude developer governance.)
- The right to full portability – the right to exit: The freedom to port your community in its entirety, to another app without losing your connections and content.
Unlike the walled gardens of Meta, TikTok, and Twitter (now X), these open protocols allow communities to connect across platforms while maintaining control of their spaces. When you use email or browse the web, you don’t worry about which email provider or browser your friends use – it just works. Our social spaces should function the same way.
What’s missing is the bridge between these technical capabilities and the tools communities actually need to thrive. We need to move from closed, corporate platforms to open protocols that communities can shape and control. This isn’t just a technical challenge – it needs to become a social movement. We need to build systems that are co-designed with communities, that respect their autonomy, and that enable their authentic purposes.