Our Data Sharing Philosophy

As social media and technology have become ubiquitous in our lives, the consumer’s voice has leveled the balance of power between companies and consumers. We believe that by leveraging the power of public data, we can foster positive feedback loops between consumers, companies and NGOs. Consumers have the ability to shape and lead corporate roadmaps in a way that will better reflect their needs and wants, while also improving that company’s bottom line. In other words, there is tremendous value in the aggregate opinions of consumers and we want to help amplify and democratize those voices for the benefit of those consumers and the companies that serve them.

We are conscious, however, that there are privacy interests at stake. Being a steward of personal data is a particularly unique responsibility for us because we do not have a direct relationship with the content creators about whom we process personal data. We therefore hold ourselves accountable for incorporating into our data sharing philosophy three privacy principles:

1. Protect people’s privacy: This principle is foundational for us. We keep people’s privacy front and center, incorporating privacy by design and default into our processes as we build and improve our products. We do not do anything that we think would violate a reasonable person’s privacy expectations.
2. Be transparent: It is critically important that people understand how their data is used. This requires transparency about our business and operations. We strive to make it as clear as possible to content creators what we do, how we do it, and the rights that content creators have. This is all outlined in our Author Privacy Statement.
3. Go above and beyond: Underpinning the two principles set out above is our drive to go beyond various regulatory standards when it comes to privacy. We are committed to being a leader on data privacy. We conduct voluntary external audits to determine what we can be doing better. We also have a privacy working group of key members from each department to oversee our privacy roadmap and evangelize our commitment to privacy throughout the business.

The proliferation of large sets of data has changed the way consumers and businesses interact with each other. We truly believe this change can be used to benefit all parties involved. Nevertheless, we also believe in the critical importance of data privacy. We want to find this balance and therefore orient ourselves around helping our customers be consumer fit while protecting the privacy interests of content creators.