Meta's longtime content policy chief Bickert leaving to teach at Harvard

Meta's long-time content policy chief Monika Bickert, who oversaw the writing and enforcement of Facebook’s content policies and had a role in the company’s approach to user safety issues, is leaving the company for a job at Harvard Law School.

Bickert will stay at Meta until August and work on a transition plan with Kevin Martin, who oversees Meta’s global policy team, she wrote in an internal post viewed by Reuters on Friday, which said she had long been interested in teaching.

As head of content policy, Bickert has regularly served as Meta’s public face amid controversies over its handling of political content and teen mental health. A former federal prosecutor, she joined Facebook in 2012. The company later changed its name to Meta.

“Yes, we’re a business and we make profit, but the idea that we do so at the expense of people’s safety or well-being misunderstands where our own commercial interests lie,” she wrote in 2021 after the leak of documents by former Meta employee Frances Haugen.

In a statement, Meta Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan praised Bickert’s work at the company.

Reuters