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Emergent Human Rights

In The Age of Revolutions

Noah Gift

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Context for French Revolution

  • Feudalism
  • Poverty and Hunger
  • Emerging ideas of democracy
    • Thomas Paine Common Sense
    • American Revolution
  • Pamphleteers (Mass printing)

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Both systemic issues and random events converged to create a political storm

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Positive - Rights of Man

A reshaping of the sociopolitical landscape via recognition of human rights that influenced democracy globally

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Examples:

  • Liberty
  • Property
  • Security
  • Natural Rights
    • Freedom
    • Ownership
    • Security
    • Resistance to oppression
  • National authority vs individual ruler
  • (Major limitations for women, slavery)

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Negative - Mob Rule & Napoleonic Era

Major negative elements include violent and irrational mob rule that indiscriminately hurt the innocent and led to the rule by ruthless Napoleon.

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Examples:

  • Misinformation spread by pamphlets
  • Innocent victims of violence
  • Political purity purges wiped out entire movement
  • Power vacuum opened door to a charismatic tyrant Napoleon

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Feudalism

Human rights non-existent via system built on exploitation and extraction.

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Examples:

  • Limited education
  • Forced labor
  • Arbitrary justice
  • No property rights

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Digital Feudalism

Human rights non-existent via system built on exploitation and extraction.

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Examples:

  • No opt-out scraping or dark patterns
  • Dystopian labor (gig economy)
  • Opaque policies
  • Data serfdom as users are trapped on platform
  • Intellectual handicap of population through echo chambers, addiction and substitution of high quality sources for click bait.

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Surveillance Capitalism

A business model designed to profit from mass surveillance of humans.

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Examples:

  • Democracy threatened as hard to be informed
  • Behavior modification through nudges
  • Algorithms rule vs nations
  • Asymmetrical power of corporations over governments and citizens
  • Vulnerable to data breaches

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Need for Human Digital Rights

Humans are more important than corporations or technology

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Examples:

  • Data and intellectual property belongs to the human and their use must be opt-in
  • A business model that depends on exploitation of humans is defective
  • Right to a digital commons
  • Right to not be addicted
  • Right to live free of algorithmic harm

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