Facebook is tangling with regulators around the world these days, and the company’s porous privacy settings have not escaped the ire of officials in Washington, DC.
So in an effort to cope with what is sure to be more international scrutiny, Facebook has hired a White House official to work with its policy team inside the Beltway.
Marne Levine, currently chief of staff at the White House National Economic Council, will join the world’s largest social network as vice president of global public policy. In her new role, she will help build and manage policy teams in Asia, the Americas and Europe.
Ms Levine currently works on domestic and international economic policy for the White House, under the supervision of Larry Summers, director of the National Economic Council. Previously she was chief of staff for Mr Summers during his tenure as president of Harvard University.
Ms Levine becomes the second Summers protégé to join Facebook. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s highly regarded chief operating officer, had Mr Summers as her thesis adviser at Harvard, then worked for him during the Clinton administration when he was Secretary of the Treasury.
Ms Levine will have her work cut out for her at Facebook. As the site approaches 500m users around the world, regulators from Germany to Canada to Australia are grappling with how to contend with the site and its outsized influence.
At issue is the degree to which governments need to make sure a private company like Facebook is not mishandling the immense amounts of personal information users post on the site. Different countries have different standards, making the issue exceedingly complex for Facebook.
In Canada, Facebook has been working to address concerns raised by the country’s privacy commissioner. In German and Switzerland, regulators are questioning the site’s practice of allowing users to upload pictures and information about other people without their explicit permission.
In the US, a group of senators called on Facebook to simplify its privacy controls following the debut of new features in April. Shortly after that, we revealed that the company had enlisted the help of former Bush regulator Tim Muris to help it defend its privacy practices on Capitol Hill.
Since Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg backed down last month with a revamp of the site’s privacy controls, the furore has died down a bit. But given its history of pushing the envelope when it comes to sharing, and the site’s growing international footprint, Ms Levine and the entire policy team are likely to be busy for years to come.
