Vanity Fair

When it comes to figuring out how Facebook actually works—how it decides what content is allowed, and what isn’t—the most important person in the company isn’t Mark Zuckerberg. It’s Monika Bickert, a former federal prosecutor and Harvard Law School graduate. At 42, Bickert is currently one of only a handful of people, along with her counterparts at Google, with real power to dictate free-speech norms for the entire world. In a meeting room called "Oh, Semantics", she sits at the head of a long table, joined by several dozen deputies in their 30s and 40s.

CNN president Jeff Zucker, the guy who first brought our president to the small screen when he green-lighted The Apprentice in 2004 while running NBC, had arguably schooled Donald Trump in the art of reality television. Halfway through President Trump’s first term, his instincts remain just as acute. If Fox News represents President Trump’s base and MSNBC has become a friendly platform for the resistance, CNN is the arena where both sides show up for cantankerous battle. “On Fox, you rarely hear from people who don’t support Trump,” Zucker said.

Initially, Tim Berners-Lee’s innovation was intended to help scientists share data across a then-obscure platform called the Internet, a version of which the US government had been using since the 1960s. But owing to his decision to release the source code for free—to make the Web an open and democratic platform for all—his brainchild quickly took on a life of its own. Berners-Lee’s life changed irrevocably, too.