Lars Backstrom leads engineering efforts on one of Facebook’s most biggest products, also often its most controversial — the News Feed. Over the past year or so, the company has been under intense scrutiny over the feed’s role in the spread of misinformation, from Russian propaganda to homegrown conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones.
Backstrom’s role means he is, according to his LinkedIn, “responsible for all ranking and backend infrastructure in News Feed” — he’s the guy who makes sure it's all chugging along.
Backstrom, a VP of engineering, has been in that role since August of 2013, but has worked at Facebook since 2009. Before that he built backend infrastructure for the People You May Know feature, and managed the News Feed Ranking and Feed Ads engineering teams.
He has also written academic papers about Facebook, including “Romantic partnerships and the dispersion of social ties: A network analysis of relationship status on Facebook,” and “Meme-tracking and the Dynamics of the News Cycle.”
Backstrom earned a doctorate in computer science from Cornell University.