- Several Facebook executives have pointed out in an interview with CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sherly Sandberg are “incredibly involved” in handling sensitive content issues
In a recent interview with Yahoo Finance, several executives at Facebook pointed out that CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg are “incredibly involved” in handling sensitive content issues. Their involvement is crucial since Facebook’s platforms have been hit hard with the spreading of false information and hate speech, which is concerning on a global scale as the company has billions of users.
The three executives that Yahoo Finance interview at Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters included head of global policy management Monika Bickert, head of global operations John DeVine, and VP of integrity Guy Rosen.
The executives had described the process of handling sensitive content issues as “nuanced” where often intelligent and good-intentioned participants often disagree.
“Any time that we’re dealing with something that is close to the line or it’s something where it’s not really clear how the policies apply or it’s something that’s particularly important, we will, at the very least, send an email up to Mark and Sheryl so that they know what’s going on,” said Bickert in the interview. “Very often, we will end up having a back-and-forth with them about why we’re making the decision we’re making, and make sure they’re OK with it.”
One of the most controversial videos that spread on Facebook was a manipulated video of Nancy Pelosi showing her slurring words. Facebook left the video up, but linked fact-checking sites that describe how the footage was modified. And Facebook also reduced the distribution of the post. And eventually, the video became hard to find. Twitter kept the video up, but YouTube took it down for violating deceptive practices policies.
As the head of content management at Facebook, DeVine oversees the 15,000 full-time employees, part-time employees, and contractors who monitor content. And DeVine
“The leadership is very involved,” added John DeVine in the Yahoo Finance interview. “At a minimum, on a weekly basis, we’re all sitting down, the three of us, as well as a group of other people and Sheryl and Mark and going over some of our most important topics that week, to check to see, are we getting it right.”
DeVine also pointed out that Zuckerberg specifically is involved in the deepest and hardest product issues.
