An independent Ethical Technology Assessment of eleven communication and coordination platforms — including Signal, Matrix, Discourse, Hylo, Open Future Coalition, Mighty Networks, and more — evaluated for agricultural and commons-based community infrastructure use.
Framework: ETA v1.0 Software Assessment at Tier 2 (Peer-Reviewed) confidence (×1.00). Scores reflect publicly available documentation, privacy policies, source code, and independent audits as of Q1 2025.
Gate structure: All four entry gates (G1–G4) are binary pass/fail, 10 points each. Any gate failure prevents ETA Eligible status regardless of category scores. Category questions scored 0–5, multiplied by 3 = category points.
Categories: Data Ethics — data minimization, purpose limitation, secondary use controls. Interoperability — open standards, API quality, data portability. Commons Fit — open source licensing, self-hosting viability, community governance. Accessibility — pricing equity, multilingual support, onboarding friction.
Critical stance: Marketing claims are not accepted at face value. WhatsApp's E2E encryption is acknowledged but does not compensate for extensive metadata collection and Meta data sharing, failing G2 and G3. Proton's score is reduced by its closed backend and 2021 IP logging incident under court order.
Contribute: Use the "Add Your Review" button on any scorecard to submit an independent assessment. Community reviews aggregate to update confidence tiers. Future versions will integrate a database backend for registry persistence.