Sunday, July 22, 2018: 2:00 pm (Booth): From the proliferation of dangerous speech online to massive data breaches to the Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal, it’s clear that tech companies’ policies and practices can have a significant impact on people’s ability to exercise their rights to freedom of expression and privacy. Yet companies aren’t doing enough to protect these rights. How can they do better and how can we incentivize them to move in the right direction? Ranking Digital Rights, a nonprofit research initiative, works with an international network of partners to set global standards for how companies in the information and communication technology sector should respect freedom of expression and privacy. Its annual corporate accountability index ranks 22 companies on a set of indicators evaluating how transparent companies are about their commitments and policies affecting human rights. This talk will give an overview of how the corporate accountability index lays out a road map for companies to improve their human rights standards. Laura will provide highlights from the recently launched 2018 index, showing where companies are beginning to be more transparent about their practices - things like content moderation policies and practices for handling user information - and where there are still significant gaps in disclosure that leave users in the dark.