For the past six years, an independent research program at New America called Ranking Digital Rights has evaluated the policies and practices of some of the world’s largest technology and telecom firms, producing a dataset that reveals their shortcomings with respect to human rights obligations. Ranking Digital Rights evaluates more than 300 aspects of each company it ranks that fall broadly into three categories: governance, freedom of expression, and privacy.

Following the release of this year’s report, which we covered at Tech Policy Press, Ranking Digital Rights hosted a session on Charting the Future of Big Tech Accountability. Nathalie Maréchal, Policy Director at Ranking Digital Rights and a past guest on this podcast, moderated the panel, which included:

• Sarah Couturier-Tanoh, Shareholder Association for Research and Education (SHARE)
• Jesse Lehrich, Co-Founder, Accountable Tech 
• Chris Lewis, President and CEO, Public Knowledge
• Katarzyna Szymielewicz, President, Panoptykon Foundation
• Sophie Zhang, activist and Facebook whistleblower