declaration of digital interdependence

Based on the work we've done with the original Declaration of Independence, here is a first draft / template of our Declaration of Digital Interdependence. Please comment to this post with your first impressions, thoughts, questions, and suggestions for what we might add, delete, or change.

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When in the course of innovation, it becomes necessary for people to break down the barriers of social, economic, and political division, and to connect with each other via the most powerful communication tools in the history of humankind, a decent respect for the opinions of all requires that they should declare the reasons which impel them to assert their interdependence.

 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are equally entitled to certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

 

– That to secure these rights, Understandings are established between individuals, communities, and organizations, deriving their just powers from the informed consent of all participants.

 

– That whenever any Form of Understanding becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the Participants to alter it or abolish it, and institute new Understanding, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

 

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Understandings long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience has shown, that people are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

 

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Understanding, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

 

–Such as been the patient sufferance of Digital Citizens; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Understandings. The history of the present tyranny of the internet is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over the use of communication technologies and associated dialogues about government and civic life. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

 

The dominant internet companies (referred to herein as Big Tech) have refused Assent to Laws, most wholesome and necessary for the public good, as they relate to business practices and both protected and unprotected forms of speech.

 

Big Tech has acted to oppose the Government passing laws of immediate and pressing importance, that would create new Understandings, unless suspended in their operation till Big Tech’s Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, Big Tech has utterly neglected to attend to them.

 

Big Tech has refused to create Understandings that would provide transparency, clarity, sovereign identity, and agency for the People to provide informed consent when engaging with Big Tech.

 

Big Tech has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing to Assent to Understandings that support Self-Sovereign Identity, the Democratic Dialogue, and Data Integrity that is supported by transparency and accountability.

 

Big Tech has combined with corporations and governments to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitutions, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving Assent to private sector Acts of pretended Legislation:

 

For betraying our trust and using our data against us in ways that hijack our attention and adversely affect our ability to make informed decisions about politics, the economy, and the world around us:

 

For requiring that we submit to Learning Management Systems, Social Media, and Software as a Service terms of use that profit on our creative content and metadata without our consent:

 

For subjecting our systems of Government to the cynical, self-serving manipulations of wealthy Big Tech executives and shareholders:

 

For replacing the public squares and the commons with corporate lobbies in which there can be no free speech:

 

Big Tech has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of its Protection and waging War against us.

 

Big Tech has polluted and distorted our understanding of reality, and all but destroyed our ability to collaborate with our fellow citizens.

 

Big Tech is at this time moving to take over the institutions of education and health care, and further concentrating informational wealth in ways that impoverish our nation and our world.

 

Big Tech in its current form has been used to excite domestic insurrections among us and turn friends and family members against one another in unreasonable conflicts.

 

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.  Any entrepreneurial technology startup whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrannical Multinational Conglomerate, is unfit to be an arbiter of a free internet.

 

We have been willing, enthusiastic participants in the success of Big Tech, and we have also made them aware from time to time of attempts by their policies and actions to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of their rise, and our need for digital affordances and services. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity – “Do No Harm” comes to mind – and we have entreated them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They have not answered our emails, or our questions in Congressional hearings, and they have proven themselves deaf to the voice of justice and the connected destiny we all share. We must, therefore, acknowledge the need for Separation, and hold them, as we hold the whole of Humanity, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

 

We, therefore, the Representatives of a Free Public Internet, in Digital Connection, Assembled, appealing to the Judgement of the World for the integrity of our intentions, do in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of the Internet, solemnly publish and declare, that the Internet is, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent; all People on the Internet are Absolved from all Allegiance to Big Tech; and that as Free and Independent Digital Participants they have full Power to establish and maintain their own identities, create, save, share, publish, and destroy their data with integrity as they alone see fit, and to do all other Acts and Things which Free and Independent Digital Participants may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of that Sense we may yet hold in Common, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

 

 

Now that we’ve declared our independence, what are we going to do with it?

 

Here are some suggestions about how we can level the playing field when we use software and online services. Please feel free to edit and add your own:

 

·      Create identities that are:

o   Ours

o   Permanent

o   Fragmentable

·