The ICT4Peace Foundation is very pleased to announce its participation at Techonomy 2018. The Foundation’s Special Advisor, Sanjana Hattotuwa, was recently featured by Techonomy Curator, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, David Kirkpatrick in ‘Facing Facebook’s Failure‘, an incisive and insightful take on the company’s highly contentious role, relevance and reach in the world, especially outside the United States.
Sanjana joins an august list of presenters, panellists and participants at Techonomy 2018, and will participate in a panel discussion on Tuesday, 13th November, moderated by David Kirkpatrick.
No company’s influence in modern society is more fraught and unresolved. Facebook faces credible accusations of serious impacts on democracy globally, of privacy of its users, and on digital addiction. The company is trying to do right, but its business model creates resistance. What should it do now? What should society do?
Sanjana will be joined by the renowned Wael Ghonim as well as Roger McNamee from Elevation Partners and Brian Wieser from Pivotal.
In addition the compelling two-part PBS documentary recently aired in the US on Facebook, the conversation will be particularly relevant in light of Facebook’s first independent and comprehensive human rights assessment, anchored to Myanmar, released just days ago, which from the company’s perspective, offers perspectives on what went wrong, and what can or will be done better in the future.
The report from a similar independent human rights assessment conducted by Facebook in Sanjana’s home country, Sri Lanka (in response to horrific violence on the ground in March 2018), is due soon, which he contributed to in addition to over 12 years of output, research, activism and advocacy around civic and social media, anchored to fragile democracies, post-war contexts and systemic violence.