Learning from Our Mistakes: What Can Smaller Platforms Learn from Ethical Challenges at Scale?

Julie Owono

Executive Director, Internet Sans Frontieres & Member, Facebook Oversight Board

Julie Owono is the Executive Director of Internet Sans Frontières (Internet Without Borders), a leading organization that defends digital rights and access to the internet, and an inaugural member of the Facebook Oversight Board. At the intersection of business and human rights, her work focuses on creating channels of collaboration between different set of actors of the internet to safeguard human rights in the digital space. Particularly, as a non-resident Fellow at the Digital Civil Society Lab at Stanford University, and as an affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, she is working on a policy and technical solution to bring local knowledge and context to algorithmic content moderation on social media platforms. Julie is a member of the Global Partnership on AI created by France and Canada, of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on AI for Humanity, and of the WEF Council on the Connected World. She was also a member of UNESCO’s Ad Hoc Expert Group (AHEG) for the Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, a Member of the World Benchmarking Alliance’s Expert Committee on Digital Inclusion, and a Civil Society member of the Global Network Initiative’s Board. Julie graduated with a degree in international law from La Sorbonne University in Paris and practiced as a lawyer at the Paris Bar.

Clint Smith

 Chief Legal Officer, Discord

Clint is the first Chief Legal Officer at Discord, leading the Legal, Trust & Safety, and Policy functions. Prior to Discord, Clint was at DataStax where he served as General Counsel and was responsible for the company’s legal affairs, including corporate law, intellectual property strategy, commercial contracts, compliance, and litigation. From 2015 to 2019, Clint served on the Board of Directors of the Business Software Alliance, the leading trade association for software companies, and regularly engaged with public sector leaders in the U.S. and Europe on data privacy and security matters.

Elizabeth M. Renieris (Moderator)

Professor of the Practice; Founding Director, Notre Dame-IBM Technology Ethics Lab

Elizabeth M. Renieris is the Founding Director of the Notre Dame-IBM Technology Ethics Lab, the applied research and development arm of the University of Notre Dame’s Technology Ethics Center, where she helps develop and oversee projects to promote human values in technology.

She is also a Technology and Human Rights Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, a Practitioner Fellow at Stanford’s Digital Civil Society Lab, and an Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.

Elizabeth’s work is focused on cross-border data governance, as well as the ethical challenges and human rights implications of digital identity, blockchain, and other new and advanced technologies.

As the Founder & CEO of HACKYLAWYER, a consultancy focused on law and policy engineering, Elizabeth has advised the World Bank, the U.K. Parliament, the European Commission, and a variety of international organizations and NGOs on these subjects. She’s also working on a forthcoming book about the future of data governance through MIT Press.

Elizabeth holds a Master of Laws from the London School of Economics, a Juris Doctor from Vanderbilt University, and a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard College.

View the Event

Presented by

Subscribe to the ThinkND podcast on Apple, Spotify, or Google.

Featured Speakers: 

• Julie Owono, Executive Director; Member of the Facebook Oversight Board, Internet Sans Frontieres
• Clint Smith, Chief Legal Officer, Discord
• Elizabeth M. Renieris, Professor of the Practice; Founding Director, Notre Dame-IBM Technology Ethics Lab