Earlier this month, Facebook made headlines by banning Donald Trump from its platforms for two more years and ending a policy that allowed politicians to publish incendiary posts even if they violated Facebook’s rules. Behind the scenes, little-known executives such as Guy Rosen, who has been Facebook’s vice president of integrity for the past two years, help make decisions about such matters.
Rosen and his counterparts manage Facebook’s ever-shifting policies and build software to curb harmful content posted on Facebook’s apps, including misinformation, hate speech and violent videos. After years of work, their strategy for addressing some of Facebook’s thorniest problems remains unsettled and fluid as new problems emerge on its apps
Rosen’s team develops the software the company uses to try to target and remove content it deems harmful, though it doesn’t publicly disclose many of the ways it measures its own progress. Meanwhile Rosen regularly contends with current and former employees who criticize him and his colleagues for not devoting more resources to the issues or for making allegedly misleading statements about the work Facebook is doing.