Version history for “Declaration of Digital Independence”

1.3 (2019-06-29) Added CC-by-sa license (thought I had done this earlier but apparently not).

1.2 (2019-06-29) Added a quote from Thomas Jefferson, author of the original Declaration, and a picture of his Monticello.

1.12 (2019-06-26) Bolded the words “We, therefore, the undersigned people of the Internet”.

1.11 (2019-06-25) In the preamble, to “centralized architecture of the Internet”, add “at present”; also, changed “exploitative spirit” to “exploitative animus”.

1.1 (2019-06-25) In the catalog of outrages, changed “privacy, security, and free speech” to “free speech, privacy, and security”. Moved “They have practiced in-house moderation…” to the first place. Added in the second place this new point: “They have banned, shadow-banned, throttled, and demonetized both users and content based on political considerations, exercising their enormous corporate power to influence elections globally.” Added in the third place this new point: “They have adopted algorithms for user feeds that highlight the most controversial content, making civic discussion more emotional and irrational and making it possible for foreign powers to exercise an unmerited influence on elections globally.”

1.02 (2019-06-10) At the end of the preamble, expand “But it has become abundantly clear more recently that a callous, secretive, controlling, and exploitative spirit guides the centralized networks of the Internet” by appending “and the corporations behind them.” This is to clarify the meaning of “they” in the catalog of outrages. This is also why in the next paragraph we add, to “To show what train of abuses we have suffered”, the clause “at the hands of these giant corporations”.

1.01 (2019-06-09) In “Principles of Decentralized Social Networks” 4, append to “Just as no one has the right to eavesdrop on private conversations in homes” the clause “without extraordinarily good reasons”.

1.0 (2019-06-09) First posted version.