Facebook
- A year on from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, there has been significant management change at Facebook.
- Some of Mark Zuckerberg’s closest lieutenants have left since the scandal broke, including his product boss Chris Cox this week.
- Scroll on for the full list of senior Facebook departures over the past 12 months.
It’s been one year since the Cambridge Analytica data scandal blew up, enveloping Facebook in a controversy that is still running to this day.
For Facebook, Cambridge Analytica was the culmination of its early "Move fast and break things mantra." The company may have become more responsible about people’s information and privacy, but that can’t make up for bad decisions and sloppy policing in its early years.
The scandal shook the company to its core, precisely because it brought some of its foundational processes into question. In righting wrongs, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is pivoting to privacy, and not all of his staff agree with his vision.
The result is some of Facebook’s most loyal servants left the company, after years of stability. Scroll on for the full list of Facebook senior departures over the past 12 months.
April 2018: The man who sold WhatsApp for $19 billion, Jan Koum.
David Ramos
Koum, along with his cofounder Brian Acton, built one of the most beloved messaging services in the world in WhatsApp. The pair consistently talked up the firm’s attitude to privacy, and always said they would never run ads on the service, as a contrast to Silicon Valley giants Facebook and Google.
But when Facebook’s offer of $19 billion came along, it was too good to turn down and the pair sold their firm to the blue giant in 2014. Inevitably, the pair came under pressure to turn WhatsApp into a revenue-generating business, and Koum quit.
Time at Facebook: 3-4 years
June 2018: Policy chief Elliot Schrage.
Reuters
Elliot Schrage’s job was never going to be easy. He joined Facebook as its public policy and communications chief in 2008 from Google, where he held a similar role.
During his decade at Facebook, he often came under fire for the way the company handled privacy. After he conducted a "condescending" Q&A with New York Times readers in 2010, journalists compared the company to BP.
Time at Facebook: 10 years
August 2018: Facebook’s ethically minded former chief security officer, Alex Stamos.
Getty
Stamos, as Facebook’s chief security officer, was surprisingly vocal during his tenure. He often criticised the way the media covered technical issues, and particularly took issue with the way Cambridge Analytica was covered.
In spite of this, Stamos did reportedly try to warn senior Facebook executives about the danger of election interference. He’s thought to have quit because the problem was handled so poorly internally.
Time at Facebook: 3 years
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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Source: Business Insider – sghosh@businessinsider.com (Shona Ghosh)