Oct 21, 2021

The Invisibly Bill of Rights

We all have rights: universally agreed upon things that we are allowed to be, do or expect as human beings. At Invisibly, we believe that those rights should apply to our digital existence.

We all have rights: universally agreed upon things that we are allowed to be, do or expect as human beings. At Invisibly, we believe that those rights should apply as directly to our digital existence as they do to our physical one. You deserve complete transparency about what you should expect from your digital experience. That’s why we created this fundamental bill of rights when it comes to your personal data.

Access premium content without the subscription fees.

Download the app

Ownership

You have the right to own your data. When information is collected about you, it should immediately become your property.

When ownership rights aren’t respected, it looks like this:

Right now, a lot of platforms you use are collecting your behavioural data – but in their eyes, it’s not yours. The term “first-party” data is widely used to describe this sentiment that the data created by your behaviour belongs to the platform you’re generating that data on. You’re seen as a generator of data – not a person, with agency over and rights to own the value you create.

Active Consent

You have the right to understand and give active consent to any use of your data. Active consent is an affirmative, informed, conscious, voluntary, unencumbered and ongoing agreement to participate. Silence is not active consent. Assumed consent is not active either.

When active consent isn’t respected, it looks like this:

Terms of Service (T&Cs) are inaccessible to most people. They take hours to read and even longer to understand. Companies know and depend on this. Personal data policies should be written in plain English (like ours). They should be friendly to lower literacy levels, and should never take more than five minutes to read. Changes to T&Cs should be proactively communicated and consented to.

Transparency

You have the right to know what data has been collected about you and what it’s being used for. Any collected data should be simply and easily displayed, in a way that you can understand.

When transparency isn’t respected, it looks like this:

Credit bureaus like TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian collect personal data behind your back to generate a score about your credit-worthiness. This score can make or break your financial future, and yet, you have no visibility over the formula being used to assess you, or the personal information being used against you to feed that formula.

What’s more: if bureaus leak your sensitive information, you may never get visibility over what happened – all because you were never given transparency over the initial interaction.

Transferability

You have the right to save, export and relocate your data as you see fit.

When transferability isn’t respected, it looks like this:

If you want to leave a social platform, it should be a simple, easy-to-find process with minimal steps to export all of your connections. You should be able to use that data when you join other social media networks, immediately linking you back up to your loved ones.

Deletability

You have the right to erase your data from any platform, effective immediately. If you want it gone, it should be gone. Simple.

When deletability isn’t respected, it looks like this:

Companies selling your personal data to the highest bidder without your consent are incentivised to make it all but impossible to delete your data. Your data is dealt with in places that you often can’t find or access, let alone delete. If you do manage to delete, there’s a caveat: as soon as the legally required period to respect that deletion is over, there’s nothing to stop companies from recollecting it in the exact same way. On the flipside, Google’s personal data deletability interface is an example of the clear, accessible and educational opt out that you deserve on every platform.

Respect

You have the right to expect people and companies to honor your preferences.

When preferences aren’t respected, it looks like this:

If data exists that indicated that you’ve recently developed an illness like MS, then advertisers using this data without your consent can flood your digital experience with mobility device advertising without providing a clear opt-out. How can your preferences be respected, when they aren’t even being considered.

At Invisibly, holding ourselves accountable to the rights of the people using our platform is not a matter of a T&Cs check-box. It’s fundamental to our business mission, purpose and business model.

We’re working toward a future where this commitment doesn’t set us apart from the pack. Are you with us?

The Invisibly Bill of Rights

We all have rights: universally agreed upon things that we are allowed to be, do or expect as human beings. At Invisibly, we believe that those rights should apply to our digital existence.

Ownership

Active Consent

Transparency

Transferability

Deletability

Respect

Invisibly

Subscriptions — without the strings attached.

More like this

How ChatGPT Is Affecting News Publishers

5 Ways for Publishers to Increase News Distribution

Proven Digital Content Strategy for Magazine Publishers

Article Paywall Bypass: Trading Data for News Subscriptions

How To Get Around News Paywalls

The Path To Increased Publisher Subscriber Retention