Johnny Søraker

IT Policy Specialist and Senior Strategist, User Trust & Safety (Dublin, Ireland)

• Developing global product policies for a range of current and emerging products.
• Coordinating cross-functional policy enforcement
• Product internationalization and localization
• Collaborating with program managers and others to influence product decisions and prioritization with the goal to improve user experience for policy-related issues.
• Engaging with internal and external stakeholders to resolve high-profile policy escalations, and establish workflows for combating abuse and policy violations at scale

Previously Assistant Professor of Philosophy of technology (PhD) at the Department of Philosophy, University of Twente, where I specialized in ethics of information technology, especially related to Artificial Intelligence, online communities, machine learning, privacy, computer-mediated communication and virtual reality. I did my PhD on the ethics, ontology and epistemology of virtual worlds (“met lof”; Dutch equivalent to summa cum laude). This in turn built on a Cand. Philol. from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (M.A.. equiv.) consisting of psychology, comparative literature and graduating on a thesis dealing with Philosophy of Mind and Artificial Intelligence.

I have published and lectured extensively on issues such as the ethical, societal and psychological effects of technology (especially related to the notion of well-being), Internet governance and the moral status of information.

Short Personal Bio:

I orginally hail from Trondheim, Norway where I spent most of my life until moving to Enschede, Netherlands for my PhD in December 2006 – after which I became Assistant Professor (tenured) in Philosophy. In addition to philosophy, my main interests are to spend time with my wife and to play the drums (in particular in the game Rock Band). I’m also a beer lover, always on the lookout for beers I haven’t tried, and generally prefer idle or profound conversations Although I hardly have the time anymore, I’ve also enjoyed making music – in particular Dark Ambient – resulting in two CDs and a few live performances with the one-man project Metus Mortuus).  In general, I still suffer from having been a geek all my life, and still appreciate some recreational programming, Web design and generally making sure that my life is intertwined with the interwebs.