source: By Milky - Museum of the French Revolution, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78860432

The French Revolution is perhaps the most crucial event in the history of the world. A population violently overthrew a monarchy and developed important concepts of both individual liberty and democracy. It also showed the violent and horrific excesses of mob rule, something the world struggles with even today. Both helpful ideas and toxic misinformation spread through pamphleteers with often deadly consequences. In the ultimate irony the most famous of pamphleteers, Jacques Hebert, who often advocated for guillotining, was a victim of it himself. [1]

Perhaps the most important contribution though was the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen”. The essence of the declarations was that French citizens had the right to liberty, property and national authority vs royalty authority. These replaced feudal ideas of rigid hierarchy, land for service, and peasant exploitation.

In the digital age, there is a new feudalism, and similar problems exist. A Digital Rights of Humans could be phrased as follows:

• Data and Intellectual Property belongs to the creator and cannot be exploited without opt-in consent.
• Humans have the right to privacy and a life free of surveillance capitalism.
• Humans own their own biometric data and it cannot be owned and stored by others
• Humans have the right to a life free of addictive technologies
• Humans have the right to protection from algorithmic harm (spreading conspiracy theories that hurt life and property). These include systems that create negative externalities like price fixing of rent.
• Humans have the right to a digital commons free from exploitation and destruction
• Humans have the right to real information, not propaganda
• A business model that depends on exploitation of a human’s digital rights is defective by design

Reference

1. Popkin, J., December 10, 2019, A New World Begins
2. Davidson, I., 2016, The French Revolution
3. The French Revolution, The Rest is History Podcast

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