Facebook leader sits down with Harvard’s Jonathan Zittrain
At a time when social media affects everything from our private lives to our public discourse, the rules governing online behavior are increasingly under scrutiny. At Facebook, the process behind those rules — how they are determined, and how they continue to change — is the province of Monika Bickert, the head of global policy management. On Monday, Bickert, who holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School, joined Jonathan Zittrain, the George Bemis Professor of International Law, for a wide-ranging conversation about the social media giant’s policies and its evolution. The event, which included tough questions from audience members on the company’s recent headline-making controversies, was hosted by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. Citing his sense of the “pessimism and near-despair that permeate our feelings about social media,” Zittrain opened the conversation by recalling a September 2017 discussion in which he and Bickert looked at the rise of white...