Who is Sudhir Krishnaswamy, the lone Indian on Facebook's oversight board?

The 20-member board can overturn content decisions, even those made by Zuckerberg

sudhir-facebook Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Vice Chancellor of the National Law School of India University, is the lone Indian representation on the 20-member Oversight board of Facebook

On Wednesday, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg informed about the formation of a new content oversight independent board. The 20-member external board will have the right to overturn content decisions, even those made by Zuckerberg, as long as they comply with local laws. "Its decisions will be final--regardless of whether I or anyone else at the company agrees with them. Facebook won't have the power to remove any members from the board. This makes the oversight board the first of its kind," the Facebook CEO announced in a post on Wednesday. 

The independent board, which some have dubbed Facebook’s “Supreme Court,” includes a former prime minister, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and several constitutional law experts and rights advocates among its first members. Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Vice Chancellor of the National Law School of India University, is in the 20-member board, the lone Indian representation. 

Krishnaswamy is a co-founder of Centre for Law and Policy Research, Bengaluru, and a partner at Ashira Law. He is currently a faculty member at the Azim Premji University. He was also the Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Visiting Professor of Indian Constitutional Law at Columbia Law School.

Krishnaswamy graduated from the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru (B.A. LL.B). He read the BCL and obtained a D.Phil. from Oxford University. He has been a Teaching Fellow in Law at the Pembroke College at Oxford University, an Assistant Professor at NLSIU and a Professor at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata. In the past, Sudhir has also worked in the Prime Minister’s Committee on Infrastructure and the Kasturirangan Committee on Governance of Bengaluru. He has authored a book titled ‘Democracy and Constitutionalism in India’ which was published by the Oxford University Press in 2009.

His main areas of interest are constitutional law, legal education, legal theory, intellectual property law and administrative law.

Creating this new mechanism for platform governance to oversee a private company is a radical reform, reported news agency IANS quoting Krishnaswamy. "If this mechanism works, it provides us with a new institutional model for handling content moderation in the future,” he was quoted as saying.

The step is as important to the future of democracy as it is to the market, added Krishnaswamy.

Krishnaswamy's colleagues in the board include former European Court of Human Rights judge András Sajó, Internet Sans Frontières Executive Director Julie Owono, Yemeni activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Tawakkol Karman, former editor-in-chief of the Guardian Alan Rusbridger, and Pakistani digital rights advocate Nighat Dad. 

Nick Clegg, Facebook’s head of global affairs, told Reuters that the board’s composition was important but that its credibility would be earned over time. "The oversight board will help us protect our community by ensuring that important decisions about content and enforcement are thoughtful, protect free expression, and won't be made by us alone," said Zuckerberg. 

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