Diaspora*

Diaspora* Adopts Computers, Freedom, and Privacy’s Social Network Users’ Bill of Rights

Diaspora* is a 100% volunteer-run, open organization, which means that our users do everything from open-source software development to spreading the word to translations to graphic design to providing support to fellow users, among other things.

A few weeks ago, a community member named Jon Pincus recommended that Diaspora* adopt the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy‘s Social Network Users’ Bill of Rights, which was drafted, debated, voted, and adopted during the 2010 annual conference held in San Jose, CA.

Today, we are excited and proud to announce that Diaspora* has agreed to abide by CFP’s Social Network Users’ Bill of Rights, as follows:

1. Honesty: We will honor our privacy policy and terms of service.
2. Clarity: We will make sure that our policies, terms of service, and settings are easy to find and understand.
3. Freedom of speech: We will not delete or modify user data without a clear policy and justification.
4. Empowerment : We will support assistive technologies and universal accessibility.
5. Self-protection: We will support privacy-enhancing technologies.
6. Data minimization: We will minimize the information users are required to provide and share with others.
7. Control: We will work toward enabling users to own and control their data and won’t facilitate sharing their data unless they agree first.
8. Predictability: We will obtain the prior consent of users before significantly changing who can see their data.
9. Data portability: We will make it easy for users to obtain a copy of their data.
10. Protection: We will treat user data as securely as our own confidential data unless they choose to share these data, and notify them if these data are compromised.
11. Right to know: We will show users how we are using their data and allow them to see who and what has access to their data.
12. Right to self-define: We will allow users to create more than one identity and use pseudonyms. We will not link them without their permission.
13. Right to appeal: We will allow users to appeal punitive actions.
14. Right to withdraw: We will allow users to delete their accounts and remove their data.

Please note that our adoption of the CFP’s Social Network Users’ Bill of Rights is aspirational: That is, we aspire to have the required functionality in place soon so we can enforce all these rights, and to this end, we’ll use the aforementioned principles to guide our product development from this day forward.

We hope that our decision to adopt the CFP’s Social Network Users’ Bill of Rights will encourage other tech companies to do the same and join us in our effort to create a better, safer, and more private social web for Internet users from around the world.