Our entire lives are documented and stored with someone else — our private photos, love letters, sexts, bank details, etc. US and foreign governments, law enforcement, and even other corporations are increasingly demanding this data from our Verizons, Googles, and Snapchats. Cheezburger is not immune from these requests.
In response, companies have issued “Transparency Reports” as a way to inform consumers about these requests. These reports force companies that store your data to be accountable to the users about the process of disclosing information and shine a light on the tactics used by those who demand this information.
This is a good start. But unfortunately, very few people ever read them.
The problem is, Transparency Reports are boring as fuck.
You’ve probably never read one. That’s our fault.
Once upon a time, 404 was just an error. It’s the code a Web server returns when it can’t find the page you requested. Then, brilliance! Creative designers and scrappy engineers turned 404 pages into an art form. In fact, clever 404 pages may be one of the earliest Internet memes.
From the straight forward, to cleverly on-brand, to artistic and weird, 404 pages are a microcosm of the diverse creativity of the Web.
Quite often, startups use 404 pages as a way to establish a brand voice, showcasing their creativity or quirkiness. Even today, as the trope of the clever 404 pages wear thin, startups are still trying.
But the first problem with this trope is that a 404 page contains very little content to work with and therefore limit our creative potential. The second problem is that everyone must have a 404 page. So no new information is being conveyed by tarting up this error screen.
Cheezburger is proposing a new creative playground: The Transparency Report.
We’ve set an example. Check out our 2014 Transparency Report on our company blog. You’ll be glad you did. If you’re on the fence on clicking that link, we’ll give you some sizzling highlights from the report:
- A Queen
- A section where we give you the bird
- Singing of Japanese origin
- Lots of zeros
- And most importantly, lots of fucks given about your rights.
This is a chance to turn good-but-boring into surprising and delightful.
Every communication with a customer is an opportunity to reinforce the company’s brand. A Transparency Report is no exception. In fact, the dry-but-important need to publicly disclose requests for your information demands that we try harder to reach those we serve. We can immediately see the need to balance government requests for a user’s information, but we cannot overlook the effects of overreaching or fraudulent copyright takedown notices as a means of political and civil intimidation, suppression of ideas, or their chilling effects on the right to fair use and the erosion of the public domain.
We think our report will be the most enjoyable report on a data request policy you’ve seen to date. We talked with the folks at the Electronic Frontier Foundation this year and learned a lot while compiling our report which has led us to improve our processes. But what we’d love to see is for other companies to step up their game to publish their own Transparency Report—one that informs and entertains.
Looking back, we could have done much more this year. We have big plans to make the 2015 more informative and more entertaining.
Who’s up for the challenge?
Cheeburger publishes sites and apps that make you laugh and to help you make your friends laugh. Get the Cheezburger app now.
