Status: REWRITTEN October 11, 2026. This edition replaces, rather than reproduces, the former privacy-centered report. The original research was retained in the user's earlier ZIP, not in this current canonical archive. Consult revision_history/CORRECTIONS_AND_PROVENANCE.md for the reasons and full source mapping.
Editorial position and scope
Proposed mission: Cognitive liberty means that people can think and inquire freely, seek and receive information, voluntarily share their views and evidence, encounter disagreement, and challenge opaque decisions that prevent lawful information from being found. Access does not equal endorsement: freedom to inspect a claim is compatible with labeling its evidence weak, correcting falsehoods, and applying proportionate lawful restrictions. Individual privacy remains an option and a safeguard, not the central objective or a demand that people stop sharing with knowledge systems.
Status of this document: Independent desk research as of October 11, 2026. It uses public sources and the existing public website. It is not an internal site audit, a measured search-ranking experiment, an inspection of proprietary AI training datasets, or legal advice. Numbered [S##] citations resolve to SOURCES.md.
Revised conclusion
Intellectual diversity depends on people being able to seek, receive and impart ideas. The web link is one instrument for doing that, not a substitute for transparency, evidence or legal rights.
Search, browsers, social platforms, AI answers and hosting can create chokepoints. Independent linking can create complementary paths that lessen dependence but cannot by itself solve market concentration. Policy analysis should avoid equating private ranking decisions with unconstitutional government censorship.
Findings and evidence
Finding 1. UDHR Article 19 establishes a freedom to seek and receive information, though translating that into specific private ranking obligations is a separate contested legal issue. [S01][S24]
Finding 2. The EU DSA includes some transparency obligations and a non-profiling recommender option for covered very large online platforms; it does not require indiscriminate equal promotion of all lawful material. [S13][S14]
Finding 3. NIST’s voluntary AI framework highlights transparency, accountability, fairness and validity as multiple objectives that must be balanced. [S15]
Finding 4. The current website explicitly notes that publishers may be judged by ranking and AI source selection. [S18]
Corrected analysis
Compare interventions by choke point: alternate web indexes address discovery; RSS addresses subscriptions; links address navigation; public model evaluations address representation; appeals address procedural fairness; hosting portability addresses infrastructure resilience.
Search engines also contribute valuable functions: spam defense, broad indexing, instant relevance ranking, local information and accessibility. The goal is not to abolish them, but to give users credible alternatives when an intermediary overlooks a source.
An accountability report should identify observable technical reasons for missing content before alleging political or commercial motives. Compare search results against audited collections and explicitly report cases where the alternative network performed worse.
Competition and pluralism should be examined with diverse methods: source availability, market share, default-setting studies, legal rulings, public policy requirements and user tasks. Avoid reducing all concerns to one villain or one political ideology.
Intellectual freedom continuity
A rights-centered analysis should link the freedom to hold opinions to the freedoms to seek, receive and impart information. It should also separate duties of public authorities, laws governing platforms and voluntarily adopted publisher standards. Dissent has intellectual value even when ultimately wrong; the system should help people compare and check it. An external hyperlink contributes to public access but is not proof of a right to equal ranking or a guarantee against platform concentration. [S01][S24]
Design recommendation
Publish a positive-rights charter with clear distinctions between accessibility, accuracy, endorsement, ranking and platform obligations.
- Map every discoverability dependency for the website and choose at least one alternative for each critical point.
- Create an open export of its topic directory and start a volunteer-maintained external mirror policy.
- Publish a verified cases register of discoverability issues with transparent uncertainty.
Proposed validation
- Can visitors reach a target source if one discovery provider is unavailable?
- Accuracy of source availability across multiple discovery providers.
- Independent site referrals and subscriptions versus one-provider dependency.
Limits and caveats
No general human-rights text guarantees inclusion in a particular private search index or pretraining dataset. Causal concentration claims require evidence and jurisdiction-specific analysis.
Source references
- [S01] Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Arts. 18–19 — United Nations: https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights. Relevance: Human rights to thought, opinion and to seek/receive/impart information; does not confer guaranteed ranking.
- [S13] Digital Services Act – recommender systems and user transparency — European Union Regulation 2022/2065: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2022/2065/oj. Relevance: Transparency and platform obligations depend on service classification; not a general equal-ranking law.
- [S14] Digital Services Act transparency database and data access — European Commission: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/dsa-brings-transparency. Relevance: Description of decisions databases and researcher access.
- [S15] AI Risk Management Framework — NIST, 2023: https://www.nist.gov/itl/ai-risk-management-framework. Relevance: Voluntary risk framework: validity, transparency, harms, fairness, contestability.
- [S18] Cognitive Liberties homepage — CognitiveLiberties.com, observed 2026-10-11: https://cognitiveliberties.com/. Relevance: Current site uses privacy-centric message while also addressing publisher discoverability and AI training.
- [S24] Right to seek, receive and impart information — United Nations Rule of Law: https://www.un.org/ruleoflaw/en/thematic-areas/governance/freedom-of-information. Relevance: Explains Article 19 access and expression rights.
Continue independent inquiry
Follow the cited primary sources, compare their evidence, and draw your own conclusions. Disagreement is part of discovery—not evidence of wrongdoing.
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