Roy Austin is vice president of civil rights and deputy general counsel at Meta. Prior to this, he was a partner with the law firms of Harris, Wiltshire and Grannis and McDermott Will and Emery. Previously, Austin was the White House Domestic Policy Council’s deputy assistant to President Obama in the Office of Urban Affairs, Justice, and Opportunity. There, he co-authored a report on Big Data and civil rights, worked with the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, developed the Police Data Initiative, and expanded reentry assistance. Austin was also deputy assistant attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice civil rights division. He began his career as an Honors Trial Attorney with the criminal section of the DOJ civil rights division. (Meta is a 2023 Festival Underwriter Sponsor)
Previously
If the First Amendment’s protections against government intrusion are a core tenet of American democracy, what happens when the chief regulators of speech are private technolo...