The GliaNet Fiduciaries™ Pledge

Overview

This document provides a template for the GliaNet Fiduciaries™ Pledge. This entails an entity's voluntary commitment to specified ethical principles of conduct to its ultimate clients or customers, as a matter of its internal governance and business model.

The Pledge is rooted in the GliaNet Alliance's "PEP" model, derived from the duties of care, fidelity, and loyalty attributable to common law fiduciaries. The purpose and intent behind fiduciary duties is to ensure that those entrusted with managing another's interests act with the highest standards of loyalty, care, and good faith, placing the beneficiary's needs above their own and avoiding conflicts that could compromise trust. These duties have been modified and updated to apply to interactions between Web-based entities (B2B), and to individuals/end users who are now bona fide clients (B2C).

As a bona fide member of the GliaNet Alliance, and its so-called "Phase Four" Incubator, Net Privity is entitled to take the next step of committing to become a GliaNet Fiduciary™ by incorporating the Pledge into its governance instruments, including online terms of service, Master Service Agreements, and client contracts. By doing so, Net Privity is authorized to emblemize its Pledge commitment by use of a trustmark, styled here as a "pledgemark" (see Figure 1). This pledgemark can be placed on various Net Privity documents, linking to its actual Pledge language.

This pledgemark relates only to Net Privity primary paying clients, and not to those clients' own end user customers, vendors, or other unrelated entities.

By utilizing the GliaNet Fiduciaries™ pledgemark in this manner, Net Privity agrees to retain ultimate responsibility for its actions in furtherance of the enunciated Pledge duties, to the extent consistent with applicable laws, technical feasibility, and commercially reasonable efforts. Any potential recourse is tied to the company, and not to any outside organization, including the GliaNet Alliance. However, the Alliance reserves the right to unilaterally revoke Net Privity authorization to utilize the pledgemark, and hold itself out publicly as a GliaNet Fiduciary™, should there be sufficient evidence that Net Privity is misusing the Pledge and accompanying pledgemark through deceptive and fraudulent practices.

An example of the Pledge in action is the version adopted by Alliance member company DataSapien.

I. The Three Pledge Tiers

Tier One: Protect (Guardian): Duty of Care

This pledged commitment combines two essential elements of care: the fiduciary duty of care (taking reasonable and prudent steps to help ensure that the individual client is not harmed by the company's actions), and the tort-like liability standard (doing no actual harm to the client). This is the foundational principle of the PEP Model, which amounts to taking a protective, "do no harm" posture to defend the client.

In Web terms, Net Privity agrees to take certain steps to safeguard the client's personal data and any shared confidences. For example, Net Privity agrees not to share the client's personal data with a third party without express and authentic consent. This duty also encompasses agreeing not to use cookies or other mechanisms to surveil or track the customer's online activities, extract data outside of the acknowledged commercial relationship, or use the data in any way to manipulate the client's actions or behaviors. Beyond compliance with any applicable data protection legal requirements, such as GDPR, Net Privity will utilise a variety of techniques, such as data localization, minimization, and anonymization, to help keep the client's personal data safe and secure.

Tier Two: Enhance (Mediator): Duty of Fidelity

What some scholars have labelled the "thin" duty of loyalty states that Net Privity will resolve any conflicts of interest or duties in favour of the individual client.

In the Web context, Net Privity can also take on the role of a neutral mediator between competing interests. For example, Net Privity can help the client establish social media, news, or shopping feeds, that better represent the client's interests, or those of their end user customers, as opposed to those of outside data brokers or surreptitious marketers and advertisers.

Tier Three: Promote (Advocate): Duty of Loyalty

What some scholars have labelled the "thick" duty of loyalty is the high-water mark of the PEP Model. Here, Net Privity agrees to take proactive steps to promote the best interests of the client, in agreed alignment with the company's product capabilities and strategic direction. Examples could include recommending additional/more advanced technologies to advance the client's interests, such as helping promulgate intent-casting applications or algorithmic middleware decision engines to serve the client's end user customers.

II. Authentic Customer Consent

As a way of acquiring personal data and influencing the end user, most Web companies employ "notice and consent" processes, blessed by GDPR and other data privacy regimes. Unfortunately, such processes are wholly inadequate to gain actual assent from an individual, because they do not require an authentic commercial relationship.

As part of its Pledge to its customers and clients, the GliaNet Fiduciary™ agrees to interact with its customers and clients using more comprehensive and relational "connect and concur" processes. These include five core elements, based on the Elizabeth Edenberg/Meg Jones framing:

Context: Net Privity provides only specified services and offerings to its customers and clients.
Scope: Net Privity explains how its provided services may affect aspects of the client's digital self, including her personal data, algorithmic decision-making, and virtual interfaces.
Knowledge: Net Privity transparently provides the client with all relevant information about the commercial relationship, utilizing plain language and machine/AI-readable formats.
Voluntarism: Net Privity offers its services to the client free from any deception or coercion, and with ample options made available to the client to join/leave the relationship.
Fairness: Net Privity extends fair and equitable treatment to the client vis-à-vis other clients and customers.

Disclaimer

The undersigned acknowledges and agrees that participation in, or adherence to, the GliaNet Fiduciary Pledge (the "Pledge") is voluntary and undertaken solely for purposes of expressing a commitment to certain data-governance and ethical-technology principles. Nothing in the Pledge, nor any related statements, materials, or activities, shall be construed to create between GliaNet Alliance and the undersigned, or between any participating organizations, any legal relationship, partnership, joint venture, agency, or obligation of any kind under applicable law. Each party remains an independent entity responsible for its own decisions, representations, and legal obligations, and no party shall be deemed to have created or assumed any legal relationship with another by virtue of this Pledge.

Crucially, the company holds ultimate liability for its actions, as it currently does for any other voluntarily adopted external-facing policy. Any recourse is tied to the company, not any outside organization. A dissatisfied customer can pursue remedies only against the company, and not the GliaNet Alliance or other body.

Net Privity is a for-profit, consumer-facing proof-of-concept company, while GliaNet is the nonprofit that builds the Embedded Fiduciary Governance framework; the two are separate legal entities. Although they share leadership, Net Privity receives no special treatment from GliaNet, and GliaNet's Embedded Fiduciary Governance framework remains open source and available to all.

For more information about the GliaNet Fiduciary™ Pledge, please check out the website here, or contact hello@glianetalliance.org.