Mozilla Worldview Project Principle #1

[jfinette]

Your perspectives, comments and ideas are important and valued - we’d like to invite you to add your voice.

Proposed Principle #1

An internet that is “Open and accessible to all” means a deep commitment to inclusion, non-discrimination and opportunity for all in online life.

• This principle allows us to talk about inclusion, non-discrimination in online life, and intentionally making the Internet a welcoming space for everyone.

Please find the raw feedback we collected for principle #1 at a recent Mozilla All Hands, which might spark a thought. We would appreciate your comments on the Discourse thread here directly.

Thank you.

:: This is post 2/6 to see the rest of the posts and for more context click here.

[tabesin (André Rebentisch)]

Principle 1 hijacks a fundamental technical principle (open and accessible) to become something entirely different, namely inclusion and non-discrimination. I hold that when you say “open and accessible” you mean exactly that. When you say “inclusive” you also mean exactly that.

[amir.aharoni]

I’d love this to be more explicitly focused on the world as a whole.

Mozilla has a world-wide mission, but it’s centered in the U.S., so it’s very easy for it to think that U.S.-level diversity is the same as world-wide diversity.

U.S.-level diversity is most often about race, gender, and sexual orientation. It may also include religious affiliation or lack thereof, age and political affiliation.

All of these things are valid and important on both U.S. and world-wide scale, but if you want to go truly world-wide, you need to take more things into account:

• Language diversity: Most people don’t speak English. Most people don’t follow American and American-based narratives about freedom and diversity.
• Country diversity: American laws may influence the web as a whole, but there are other things that influence it.
• Diversity of ways in which people access the web: ISPs work differently in different countries. Different devices are popular in different countries.
• Diversity of ways in which people write their language: In the U.S. everybody has a keyboard in which you can type your language, English. The same is not true for all countries. In many countries, only English letters appear on the keyboard keys, even though most people in that country don’t speak English. India is the most notable example, and there are others.

So when you’re talking about non-discrimination and diversity, remember to think beyond the U.S. Have people from other countries in every conversation. Have people who don’t know English in every conversation, and invest in translation and interpretation if needed. This is not too expensive; what is too expensive is not to have these people at the table.

[tonyw (Tony Wasserman)]

I strongly support the notions of “inclusion, non-discrimination, and opportunity for all”, but the term “Open and accessible to all” has additional different and important meanings for me.

André pointed out an important technical principle, and I’d like to build on that. One aspect of accessibility is affordability: in some locations, the cost of using the Internet is extremely high compared to the average income of the population. Another aspect is safety: if authorities use their ability to monitor Internet activity, then the Internet does not give people the chance to voice dissenting or controversial views without fear of reprisals. A third aspect of accessibility is the absence of blocking mechanisms that limit people to a selected subset of Internet content, e.g., a walled garden. A fourth aspect of accessibility is fair service, where the Internet service provider treats all content equality (net neutrality) without favoring some sites and services over others.

I would prefer to treat these key technical issues as one principle and to treat the topics of inclusion, non-discrimination and opportunity as a different principle.