A bill of rights for social network users

In March of this year, in the wake of the Google and Facebook incidents late last year, which showed how these companies, and probably many more, do not respect their users’ privacy, a group of panelists at the SXSW conference in the United States drafted a document they called the Social Network Users’ Bill of Rights.

This bill of rights hasn’t gotten much attention, as far as I know, but it is interesting, and important. I think we users of social networks should push for the creation of a document like this one, with real legal weight, don’t you think? Here is how the document opens, and I look forward to your opinions.

We the users expect social network sites to provide us the following rights in their Terms of Service, Privacy Policies, and implementations of their system:

1. Honesty: Honor your privacy policy and terms of service

2. Clarity: Make sure that policies, terms of service, and settings are easy to find and understand

3. Freedom of speech: Do not delete or modify my data without a clear policy and justification

The document goes on to list fourteen rights in all. Via Identity Blog.