Yale Genocide Studies Program Hosts Symposium on Corporate Responsibility for Atrocity Prevention in the Digital Era

On October 10, the Yale Genocide Studies Program on Mass Autorcities in the Digital Era hosted a full-day symposium on Exploring Corporate Responsibility for Atrocity Prevention, with the aim to bring together global experts in journalism, business ethics, and human rights to examine how corporate behavior, particularly in the tech sector, shapes the conditions that enable modern mass atrocities.
Following opening remarks from David Simon, Director of the Genocide Studies Program at The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for international and Area Studies at Yale, the event began with a keynote by Max Fisher, New York Times reporter and author of The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World. Fisher described how social media platforms rely on engagement-driven algorithms that mimic addictive systems found in gambling and cigarettes. He explained how rumor-propagation patterns, first seen in Indonesia, spread across Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter before appearing in the United States as QAnon narratives. These algorithmic systems, Fisher stated, systematically elevate divisive content and condition users to behave in ways that keep one another online, fueling on-the-ground violence. Fisher noted that children are among the most vulnerable populations and highlighted schools as one of the most promising venues for reducing harm. In closing, he compared the challenge of regulating platforms to the decades-long efforts to restrict cigarette use, and warned that meaningful reform is unlikely without broad collective action and regulatory intervention. 
The first panel, Corporate Risk, Due Diligence & Regulation, featured Cecily Richard-Carvajal (Article One), Annika van Baar (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), and Todd Cort (Yale School of Management), and was moderated by Akriti Gaur (Yale Law School). The panelists discussed the recent global shift toward mandatory human-rights due diligence and the limitations of existing legal frameworks, many of which were designed to protect profit-maximizing corporate structures. They emphasized how racism, structural bias, and corporate-state alignment, such as Lafarge’s operations in Syria or the Myanmar junta’s reliance on Facebook, can undermine accountability efforts. The panel underscored that regulatory progress will remain limited unless underlying corporate incentives fundamentally change.
The second panel, Investors, Advocacy & External Pressure, brought together Simon Billenness (Campaign for a New Myanmar), Christina O’Connell (Access Now), and Sam Jones (Heartland Initiative) and was moderated by Scott Worden (Jackson School of Global Affairs). The discussion highlighted concrete examples of investor-driven impact on corporate responsibility, from coordinated campaigns that pushed Pepsi out of Burma to organized shareholder action that led Best Buy to reverse a controversial decision under pressure from LGBTQ+ rights groups. The panelists emphasized the importance of targeted shareholder engagement, rather than divestment alone, in influencing corporate behavior. Highlighting another success of this method, they pointed to recent cases where investor pressure contributed to Microsoft withdrawing a sensitive contract and Norway divesting from Palantir.
In the closing session, Where Do We Go From Here, Michael Posner (NYU Stern school of  Business; founder/director of the school’s Center for Business and Human Rights)  called for stronger, more creative regulatory frameworks that target how companies design and deploy algorithms rather than attempting to police specific pieces of content. Posner warned that voluntary corporate reforms rarely reach the most vulnerable workers in global supply chains and emphasized the urgent need to defend democratic institutions, noting that the weakening of U.S. regulatory capacity severely undermines efforts to govern corporate behavior.
Across discussions central themes emerged: that social-media platforms pose systemic risks due to their engagement-driven business models; that corporate structures often incentivize harmful behavior; and that meaningful prevention of atrocity-enabling practices requires pressure from regulators, investors, and civil society alike. The symposium concluded with final remarks from David Simon, who underscored the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in addressing the rapidly evolving intersection of technology, corporate governance, and mass-atrocity prevention.