SAN DIEGO, Nov. 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Me2B Alliance, a non-profit standards and advocacy organization focused on safe and respectful technology, today announced that it has been awarded a $100,000 grant by the Internet Society Foundation. The foundation funds initiatives that strengthen the Internet in function and reach so that it can effectively serve all people.
The key to creating a safety standard to measure the behavior of technology is the ability to take several contexts into consideration, including the current status of the Me2B relationship. The Me2B Lifecycle model provides a framework and vocabulary to articulate and account for the dynamic “relationship context” over time when evaluating the behavior of technology.
Me2B Relationships in the digital world have even more layers than those in the physical world. In addition, our relationship with connected technology includes a set of “hidden affiliates” (third party integrations) that most of us are not aware of. This guide describes how these relationships – conscious or not – emerge as we interact with digital technologies.
The Me2B Deals or transactions that occur online typically involve three types of “currency”: money, attention or data. The individual consumer (Me) exchanges one of these currencies for goods or services online. Data monetization has emerged as the primary method of income generation to subsidize so-called “free” digital services, with little to no regulation or oversight. What sets online data monetization apart from the other two currencies is that often, customers have no idea what they are paying with – or that they are paying at all.
Me2B Alliance’s Executive Director Lisa LeVasseur and Board member Cam Geer presented “Measuring the Ethical Behavior of Technology” at the 2021 RSA Conference. In this session they shared an overview of the Me2B Alliance’s ethical “yardstick” for measuring technology, and the most current learnings from its application to websites and mobile apps. If you’re new to the Me2B Alliance, this presentation is an excellent overview of our Respectful Tech Specification and preliminary testing results.
There currently isn’t an adequate vocabulary to describe people’s experiences in the digital world, which impedes understanding and conversations around what’s actually happening, and what harms are lurking. The Me2B Alliance has developed a set of terms to help bridge this gap. Central to the vocabulary is the concept of Me2B Relationships, which are the relationships people (Me’s) have with purveyors of products or services (B’s), and the concept of Me2B Deals, which are exchanges of value between a person (Me’s) and a business (“B”).
The Me2B Rules of Engagement translate the attributes of healthy interpersonal relationships into the types of respectful and ethical behavior that technology can and should embody. Our eight Rules of Engagement are the product of years of discussion and analysis. They reflect how people like to be treated and serve as the core principles underlying the Me2B Respectful Tech Specification.
The Me2B Respectful Tech Specification is a sorely needed ethical and safety standard for the internet. It consists of a series of tests that objectively measure the behavior of a connected product or service. The Specification helps people (“Me-s”) understand how technology is treating them, and helps businesses (“B-s”) build technology that is safe and respectful for the people that use it.
The Me2B Alliance strives to do its part in shaping an effective, privacy-safe paradigm that works for both consumers (Me-s) and businesses (B-s). Every day we are figuring out pieces of this in our own marketing efforts. We want to share our learnings to help others succeed in the new world of respectful marketing.
I’m writing this on USA’s Independence Day 2021. I’ve been thinking a lot about freedom—especially in the digital world. Mainly because it doesn’t exist there (or here, since I’m posting this online).
For some time, the Me2B Alliance has been working on easy-to-understand educational material to better convey the particular harms visited upon us through the “Invisible Parallel Dataverse”, which is mainly embodied through a vast network of entities artfully calling themselves a “media ecosystem” but which is in fact the massive infrastructure and industry of Digital Advertising.
The Me2B Alliance is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit creating a safe and just digital world through standards development and independent technology testing. We are a new type of Standards Developing Organization (SDO) – involving everyday people in creating the standard for safe and respectful technology. We also perform independent testing and audits of connected technology, like websites and mobile apps.
Me2B Alliance’s Head of Validation Research, Noreen Whysel, recently presented “Shedding Light on Dark Patterns: A Case Study in Digital Harms,” at the 2021 Information Architecture Conference.
On May 6, 2021, two days after the Me2B Alliance published our report on data sharing in school utility apps, Google issued a “pre-announcement” describing major improvements to app labeling in the Android app store.
The announcement signals a serious intention to not only catch up to Apple’s privacy label, but surpass it, by introducing independent validation of the Android app privacy information.