Facebook loses product manager and Whatsapp's head

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced the departure of Chris Cox, the company's product director, and Chris Daniels, director of WhatsApp.

Cox joined the group in 2005, a year after Facebook was created, while Daniels took office just over a year ago.

No reason was explicitly given for their departure.

The changes come soon after Zuckerberg presented his plan to turn Facebook into a "privacy platform."

This week, the social media giant and its platforms WhatsApp and Instagram have also experienced the worst breakdown in the company's history. Facebook then attributed the failure to a "server configuration change".

• Facebook reorganizes its privacy controls
• WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger to "merge"

Mr. Cox, a Zuckerberg confidant, started as a software engineer for the company and helped create several key features, including News Feed.

He has also held several executive positions, in charge of human resources and participated in the launch of the Facebook platform, Workplace.

In a separate Facebook post, Mr. Cox addressed the recent proposal to move Facebook more on encrypted private communication.

"It will be a big project and we will need leaders who are excited to see the new direction come to fruition."

He gave no reason to leave, but Zuckerberg insisted that he "was discussing … his desire to do something else" for several years.

In the meantime, Daniels has been named head of Whatsapp after five years running Internet.org, an initiative to strengthen Internet connectivity around the world.

He will be replaced by Will Cathcart, who currently runs Facebook's mobile application. Fiji Simo, who managed the application while Mr. Cathcart was on paternity leave, will assume his duties.

No replacement has been announced for Mr. Cox.

Facebook has lost several top executives over the past two years, including its general counsel, security manager and co-founders of WhatsApp, Instagram and Oculus, a virtual reality company bought back in 2014.

Facebook has been strongly criticized in the past for its lack of confidentiality and the dissemination of offensive content and misinformation.

Despite the scandal, Facebook says that its number of users has continued to grow. He says that the number of people who have logged on to his site at least once a month jumped 9% last year, reaching 2.32 billion people.

The number of users in the United States – its second largest market – has however decreased by 15 million since 2017, according to market research firm Edison Research.