Is there a better way to know your privacy is respected?
This blog was first published on the Datafund blog.
In the last week, we have taken important organizational steps towards making the Fair Data Society (FDS) initiative a reality. The latter is the central project of our bigger push to change the dysfunctional way organizations treat personal data. We didn’t want to set it up as another company, so instead we created the Fair Data Society Decentralised Altruistic Community (FDS DAC) on Giveth. In short, Giveth is a decentralised charitable platform that enables socially oriented projects to get funds.
The FDS DAC is the umbrella project through which we manage all of our Giveth campaigns. Currently three are active:
Fair Companies Token Curated Registries (TCR) is the most ambitious of the three. What spurred the idea for it is the fact that there currently isn’t a reliable way to know whether an organisation actually handles personal data with respect to an individual’s privacy.
What a TCR is, how it works, and why we need it
**A TCR is a trustless way to show to what extent organizations are committed to respecting ethical principles when handling personal data.**The way it works is that organizations must stake a certain amount of tokens to get listed. Once listed, independent curators of the TCR can challenge an organization if they believe it has broken the rules of the TCR. To do so, they must put up a stake. If they prove to be right, the organization loses its stake and reputation, while the challenger gets a portion of the organization’s staked tokens. If not, the opposite applies. These are the most basic mechanics.
Such a list serves as a useful tool for both the public and organizations. The public gets reliable and quick information about an organization’s actual trustworthiness, while individuals can generate income by participating as curators of the TCR. There’s a plus side for developers as well, because such a TCR gives them a clear overview of how the services they incorporate handle the data provided.
For organizations, on the other hand, the TCR represents a new infrastructure for ethical behaviour incentives. Being listed signals that an organization can be trusted and in turn, individuals are more inclined to share data with it. The higher the stake, the stronger the signal and the higher the penalty should they get delisted.
Let’s #BUIDL this TCR
To build a novel construct such as a TCR, we first need to do a lot of research. That includes everything from listing rules, incentives models, arbitrage, cost analysis, attack vectors… What will hopefully come out of this research is a comprehensive document that will serve as the blueprint for a further building.
This is where the Fair Companies TCR campaign comes into play. If you like the idea of a Fair Data Companies TCR, you can support it by donatingand make it become a reality.
If our message resonates with you, you can also become part of FDS by:
- Joining discussions on Riot,
- promoting FDS,
- collaborating with us on our documents,
- joining our Privacy Awareness Campaign and help us spread the word.