Version 1.3 (June 29, 2019; version history) By Larry Sanger
See also: Social Media Strike! — FAQ about the project to decentralize social media — Resources

中文译版
英文原版

Humanity has been contemptuously used by vast digital empires. Thus it is now necessary to replace these empires with decentralized networks of independent individuals, as in the first decades of the Internet. As our participation has been voluntary, no one doubts our right to take this step. But if we are to persuade as many people as possible to join together and make reformed networks possible, we should declare our reasons for wanting to replace the old.
We declare that we have unalienable digital rights, rights that define how information that we individually own may or may not be treated by others, and that among these rights are free speech, privacy, and security. Since the proprietary, centralized architecture of the Internet at present has induced most of us to abandon these rights, however reluctantly or cynically, we ought to demand a new system that respects them properly. The difficulty and divisiveness of wholesale reform means that this task is not to be undertaken lightly. For years we have approved of and even celebrated enterprise as it has profited from our communication and labor without compensation to us. But it has become abundantly clear more recently that a callous, secretive, controlling, and exploitative animus guides the centralized networks of the Internet and the corporations behind them.
The long train of abuses we have suffered makes it our right, even our duty, to replace the old networks. To show what train of abuses we have suffered at the hands of these giant corporations, let these facts be submitted to a candid world.

They have practiced in-house moderation in keeping with their executives’ notions of what will maximize profit, rather than allowing moderation to be performed more democratically and by random members of the community.
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.
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.
They have required agreement to terms of service that are impossible for ordinary users to understand, and which are objectionably vague in ways that permit them to legally defend their exploitative practices.
They have marketed private data to advertisers in ways that no one would specifically assent to.
They have failed to provide clear ways to opt out of such marketing schemes.
They have subjected users to such terms and surveillance even when users pay them for products and services.
They have data-mined user content and behavior in sophisticated and disturbing ways, learning sometimes more about their users than their users know about themselves; they have profited from this hidden but personal information.
They have avoided using strong, end-to-end encryption when users have a right to expect total privacy, in order to retain access to user data.
They have amassed stunning quantities of user data while failing to follow sound information security practices, such as encryption; they have inadvertently or deliberately opened that data to both illegal attacks and government surveillance.
They have unfairly blocked accounts, posts, and means of funding on political or religious grounds, preferring the loyalty of some users over others.
They have sometimes been too ready to cooperate with despotic governments that both control information and surveil their people.
They have failed to provide adequate and desirable options that users may use to guide their own experience of their services, preferring to manipulate users for profit.
They have failed to provide users adequate tools for searching their own content, forcing users rather to employ interfaces insultingly inadequate for the purpose.
They have exploited users and volunteers who freely contribute data to their sites, by making such data available to others only via paid application program interfaces and privacy-violating terms of service, failing to make such freely-contributed data free and open source, and disallowing users to anonymize their data and opt out easily.
They have failed to provide adequate tools, and sometimes any tools, to export user data in a common data standard.
They have created artificial silos for their own profit; they have failed to provide means to incorporate similar content, served from elsewhere, as part of their interface, forcing users to stay within their networks and cutting them off from family, friends, and associates who use other networks.
They have profited from the content and activity of users, often without sharing any of these profits with the users.
They have treated users arrogantly as a fungible resource to be exploited and controlled rather than being treated respectfully, as free, independent, and diverse partners.

We have begged and pleaded, complained, and resorted to the law. The executives of the corporations must be familiar with these common complaints; but they acknowledge them publicly only rarely and grudgingly. The ill treatment continues, showing that most of such executives are not fit stewards of the public trust.
The most reliable guarantee of our privacy, security, and free speech is not in the form of any enterprise, organization, or government, but instead in the free agreement among free individuals to use common standards and protocols. The vast power wielded by social networks of the early 21st century, putting our digital rights in serious jeopardy, demonstrates that we must engineer new—but old-fashioned—decentralized networks that make such clearly dangerous concentrations of power impossible.
Therefore, we declare our support of the following principles.

Principles of Decentralized Social Networks
  1. We free individuals should be able to publish our data freely, without having to answer to any corporation.
  2. We declare that we legally own our own data; we possess both legal and moral rights to control our own data.
  3. Posts that appear on social networks should be able to be served, like email and blogs, from many independent services that we individually control, rather than from databases that corporations exclusively control or from any central repository.
  4. Just as no one has the right to eavesdrop on private conversations in homes without extraordinarily good reasons, so also the privacy rights of users must be preserved against criminal, corporate, and governmental monitoring; therefore, for private content, the protocols must support strong, end-to-end encryption and other good privacy practices.
  5. As is the case with the Internet domain name system, lists of available user feeds should be restricted by technical standards and protocols only, never according to user identity or content.
  6. Social media applications should make available data input by the user, at the user’s sole discretion, to be distributed by all other publishers according to common, global standards and protocols, just as are email and blogs, with no publisher being privileged by the network above another. Applications with idiosyncratic standards violate their users’ digital rights.
  7. Accordingly, social media applications should aggregate posts from multiple, independent data sources as determined by the user, and in an order determined by the user’s preferences.
  8. No corporation, or small group of corporations, should control the standards and protocols of decentralized networks, nor should there be a single brand, owner, proprietary software, or Internet location associated with them, as that would constitute centralization.
  9. Users should expect to be able to participate in the new networks, and to enjoy the rights above enumerated, without special technical skills. They should have very easy-to-use control over privacy, both fine- and coarse-grained, with the most private messages encrypted automatically, and using tools for controlling feeds and search results that are easy for non-technical people to use.

We hold that to embrace these principles is to return to the sounder and better practices of the earlier Internet and which were, after all, the foundation for the brilliant rise of the Internet. Anyone who opposes these principles opposes the Internet itself. Thus we pledge to code, design, and participate in newer and better networks that follow these principles, and to eschew the older, controlling, and soon to be outmoded networks.

We, therefore, the undersigned people of the Internet, do solemnly publish and declare that we will do all we can to create decentralized social networks; that as many of us as possible should distribute, discuss, and sign their names to this document; that we endorse the preceding statement of principles of decentralization; that we will judge social media companies by these principles; that we will demonstrate our solidarity to the cause by abandoning abusive networks if necessary; and that we, both users and developers, will advance the cause of a more decentralized Internet

I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing…
Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to James Madison, Paris, January 30, 1787. Jefferson was the author of the original Declaration of Independence, signed on July 4, 1776.

中文译版

我们的数据正被庞大的数字帝国所滥用。我们有必要建立一个由独立个体组成的去中心化互联网取代这些数字帝国，正如互联网最初几十年一样。我们是自由参与的，没有人可以质疑我们采取这一行动的权利。为了说服尽可能多的人加入这场改革，我们宣布推翻旧式互联网的理由。

我们声明，我们拥有不可剥夺的数字权利，这些权利定义了我们可以决定我们的个人信息是否能被他人使用，同时也包括了言论自由、隐私和安全。中心化的互联网架构使得我们大多数人放弃了这些权利，我们要求一个能够尊重这些权利的新系统。彻底的改革是充满困难与分歧，这也意味着这项任务并不容易。这些年来，我们会为互联网的商业化而兴奋，哪怕它是通过我们无偿的沟通和劳动而获益。但是现在已经很清楚，一个冷酷的、秘密的、控制的、剥削的力量在主导着中心化的互联网及其背后的公司。

长期的不公正对待，使得我们有权利，甚至有义务去改革旧式互联网。为了表明我们在这些大公司手中遭受了哪些不公正对待，我们会把真相公开给世人。

他们实行内部审核，以追求利益最大化，而不是以民主或社区投票的方式的方式决策。

他们基于政治考虑而审查内容或限制用户的权利，并利用其巨大的公司权力来影响全球选举。

他们采用推荐算法投喂人们最具争议的内容，使得公民讨论更加情绪化和非理性化，使得外国势力能够对全球选举产生不合理的影响。

他们要求普通用户同意难以理解的服务条款，却在保护用户合法权利的条款上模棱两可。

他们以一种没有人赞同的方式把个人数据出卖给广告商。

他们没有提供退出这些营销计划的明确的选择。

他们会要求用户接受这类条款和计划，哪怕用户已为产品和服务付费。

他们用复杂且令人不安的方式对用户的内容和行为进行数据挖掘，更多是为了了解用户而不是让用户了解自己。他们也从这些个人隐私中获益。

他们避免使用强大的、端对端加密方式，以保证对用户数据的访问权限，哪怕用户期望完全隐私。

他们拥有了大量的用户数据，却未能遵循信息安全措施，如加密，以至无意或有意向黑客或政府暴露这些数据。

他们出于政治或宗教不公平地屏蔽了一部分用户的账号、帖子和资金，对另一部分用户更加忠诚。

他们有时候会和专制政府合作，以便于专制政府既可以控制信息又可以监控人民。

他们无法提供足够理想的选项给用户以便用户调整其服务，而是更愿意通过操纵用户以获取利益。

他们无法给用户提供有效的搜索信息的工具，以至用户无法在搜索引擎上有效搜索到自己想要的东西。

他们利用自愿向网站提供提供数据的用户和志愿者，违反隐私的服务条款，通过为他人提供此类数据而牟取利益，也不会将这些数据免费公开和开源，甚至不允许用户匿名或删除自己的数据。

他们没有提供有效工具，甚至是不提供任何工具，以至用户无法按照通用数据格式导出其数据。

他们为了自己的利益而创造了一个个数据孤岛，也没有提供一种共享数据的解决方案，以迫使用户留在他们的网络中，与使用其他的网络的家人、朋友和同时分隔开来。

他们从用户的内容和活动中牟取利益，但通常不与用户分享任何利益。

他们傲慢地看用户看作可被剥削的、被控制的、可被替代的资源，而不是自由的、独立的、多元化的、值得尊重的合作伙伴。

我们一直都在请愿、恳求、诉诸于法律，而那些公司的高管一定很熟悉这些常见的抱怨，但是他们极少公开承认，甚至是极不情愿的。这种病态的处理方式一直在持续，说明了他们并不值得公众所信任。

我们的隐私、安全和言论自由的权利，并不是由任何公司、组织或政府赋予的，而是由独立个体通过自由认可普遍的标准和协议得以实现的。这种巨大的权力通过社交网络笼罩了二十一世纪初，并把我们的数字权利推向了危险的边缘，从而也证明了我们现在必须建设一个崭新的去中心化互联网，以避免权力集中的危险情况。

因此，我们宣布我们支持下列条款。

去中心化社交网络原则
  1. 我们个人有权自由地发表我们的数据，而不必知会任何公司。
  2. 我们宣布，我们合法拥有自己的数据；无论是法律还是道德层面，我们拥有控制自己数据的权利。
  3. 社交网络上的帖子应该像e-mail或博客一样为我们所掌握，而不只是存储在公司或组织的数据库之中。
  4. 正如没有充分的理由，没有人有权窃听家庭私人谈话一样，公司也必须在政府的监督下保护用户的隐私权，同时防止犯罪。因此，对于用户隐私，协议必须支持强大的端到端加密方式或其他良好的隐私保障实践。
  5. 与域名系统一样，订阅源列表应仅受技术标准或协议的限制，而不应根据用户的身份或内容进行限制。
  6. 社交媒体应该是由用户自行决定输入的数据，然后由所有运营商依据通用的技术标准或协议进行分发，就好像像e-mail或博客一样。没有运营商能够自行制定技术标准。具有特殊标准的应用是违反了用户的数字权利。
  7. 因此，社交媒体应聚合多个用户确定的、独立的数据源的帖子，并按照用户的偏好排序。
  8. 任何公司或寡头都不应控制去中心化网络的标准和协议，也不应存在与之相关的单一品牌、所有者、专有软件或互联网位置，因为这将构成中心化。
  9. 用户应期望能够参与新式网络，并享有上述权利，且无需特殊的技术技能。它们应具有操作简单的隐私控制(包括细粒度和粗粒度)，自动加密用户隐私，并且使用工具来控制订阅源和搜索结果，这些工具对于非技术人员来说也是很容易上手。

我们认为，接受这些原则是回归互联网的初心，是互联网崛起的基础。任何反对这些原则的人都反对互联网本身。为此，我们承诺遵循这些原则，设计、编程和参与新式互联网，抛弃旧式互联网。

因此，我们，即将签字的互联网人士，郑重发表声明，我们将尽一切努力建设去中心的社交网络；我们应尽可能地传播、讨论和签字本文件；我们认可前面所提及的去中心原则；我们将依据这些原则来批判社交媒体公司；我们将在必要时放弃它们的产品，以表明我们对这一事业的声援；我们，无论是用户还是开发者，都将推动互联网更加去中心化的事业。