Facebook Needs ‘Serious’ Talks With Policy Makers, Bickert Says

(Bloomberg) -- Facebook Inc. still needs to have a “serious conversation” with lawmakers and regulators about a standard set of rules for policing online content, said Monika Bickert, the social network’s vice president of content policy. 

The executive pushed back against claims made in a congressional hearing by a whistle-blower, a former Facebook employee, that the company prioritizes profit over safety, saying that was “not true.” 

“I wouldn’t be at this company as long as I have been if this company didn’t prioritize safety,” Bickert said Tuesday in a Bloomberg Television interview with Emily Chang, adding that she’s worked on policy and content at Facebook for nine years. “Policy makers and regulators have to figure out a way of ensuring accountability. What are the standards companies need to hit in this industry?”

The social media giant has been under pressure, as has its stock, since former product manager Frances Haugen handed over thousands of internal documents to the Wall Street Journal, which used them as the basis for a series of stories on the risks and harms of Facebook’s products. On Tuesday, senators reviewed those claims in a hearing on Capitol Hill. 

The company is also dealing with the fallout from a sweeping outage of its suite of platforms Monday, which it attributed to a network configuration change.

Facebook’s shares closed up 2.1% to $332.96 on Tuesday in New York. They had fallen 4.9% on Monday, the biggest drop since November last year, following the allegations and service interruption.

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.