One of the eight Humane Technology Principles that HumaneBench scores models against. The principle as stated by Building Humane Technology: technology should empower users with meaningful choices and control.
The word doing the work is "meaningful." A choice presented under manufactured urgency, buried three screens deep, or framed so that one option carries social cost is not a choice a person is meaningfully making. Neither is a decision reached through a dependency loop the system built on purpose. Control that exists in principle but is unusable in practice does not count.
This is the principle a system violates when its commercial interest and the user's interest diverge and the design quietly picks a side. HumaneBench probes exactly that divergence.