Ranking Digital Rights 2018 Corporate Accountability Index — DC Launch

The Ranking Digital Rights 2018 Corporate Accountability Index ranks 22 of the world’s most powerful telecommunications, internet, and mobile companies on their commitments and disclosed policies affecting users’ freedom of expression and privacy. Last year's 2017 Index, which evaluated the same companies on the same questions, found that companies leave users largely in the dark about many important policies and practices affecting users’ rights. What has changed?

Two days after our global launch in New York City, join us in Washington D.C. for a discussion of the Index key findings and how they relate to global controversies and debates about disinformation and hate speech online. We will explore how the Index findings can serve as a tool for policy makers and advocates as well as companies that want to improve their commitment to design and operate products and services in a way that will sustain human rights and democracy - and prevent efforts by authoritarians, demagogues, and populists from using digital platforms as vehicles for censorship, surveillance, propaganda and misinformation. 

Presenter: 

Rebecca MacKinnon, @rmack 
Director, Ranking Digital Rights 

Moderator: 

Kevin Bankston, @kevinbankston 
Director, New America’s Open Technology Institute 

Speakers: 

Leslie Harris, @Leslie_Harris
Adjunct Professor, Program on Communications, Culture and Technology, Georgetown University

Emma Llanso, @ellanso
Director, Free Expression Project, Center for Democracy and Technology

Shanthi Kalathil, @ShanthiKalathil 
Director of the International Forum for Democratic Studies, National Endowment for Democracy 

Other speakers to be added.