The Applied Social Media Lab is a two-year project (June 2024-June 2026) at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. We are bringing industry-trained technologists into academia to build social media solutions in the public interest and establish a long-lasting community of practice. This document explains the strategy we will take to accomplish our […]
Author Archives: Jonathan Bellack
Jonathan is Senior Director of the Applied Social Media Lab within the Berkman Klein Center. He is building a team of technologists to invent new social media approaches that center the public interest. If this sounds like your kind of mission, please reach out!
Jonathan is a veteran Internet technology product manager. His 30 years of experience started with dot-com era startups in New York City, Silicon Valley, and the UK. In 2004 he joined the digital advertising technology firm DoubleClick, where he helped lead a turnaround culminating in their $3.1 billion acquisition by Google in 2008. He spent another decade leading product management for technology platforms that helped millions of small and large media companies worldwide build and grow their digital advertising business.
At the end of 2018, Jonathan changed his focus to making people safer online. He was the first-ever product management director at Jigsaw, a Google unit building experimental technology to combat digital harms including organized harassment, repressive censorship, and state-sponsored disinformation. He then served as senior director of product management for Counter-Abuse Technology and Identity, where he built a 50-person team that helped protect Google and YouTube users from malicious actors, untrustworthy content, and compromised accounts.
Jonathan is a husband and father to two sons, with a boundless enthusiasm for grilling and cooking, his new labradoodle, and all flavors of nerdery from comics to video games to Dungeons & Dragons and beyond. He serves on the boards of Montclair Local Nonprofit News and New Jersey 11th for Change. Jonathan received a B.A. from Yale University and an M.B.A. from the NYU Stern School of Business.