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Last spring, Chris Cox, the product manager for Facebook, has also been promoted to oversee WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram. At the time, it was almost like succession planning. If Mark Zuckerberg were to leave the company, Cox, his longtime confidant and representative of engineering and products, would be responsible for managing it.
But Cox announced today that after 13 years in the company, he was leaving. "For more than ten years, I share the same message that Mark and I have always believed: the history of social media is not yet written and its effects are not neutral. It is related to the richness and complexity of social life. As builders, we must strive to understand its impact – all the advantages and disadvantages – and undertake the day-to-day work of leaning it toward the positive and the good. It's our biggest responsibility, "he wrote.
Cox is a valued employee of the company: it sets the direction for new employees and helps to define the product strategy of the company in every way. He was quiet in a chaotic place and the employees dubbed him "Facebook's Ryan Gosling product". helped design the first versions of NewsFeed, the most important product of Facebook. He soon managed human relations, which was probably a good training for his later work managing relations with a restive information industry. Last year, he had a long interview with Cable and explained the complexities of the company's policy on false information and hate speech, one of Facebook's top priorities for 2018.
For years it seemed like Cox and Zuckerberg agreed on almost everything. In his statement, however, Cox suggests that a recent decision separated them and that a company employee who was able to know it confirmed in a conversation with CableThis is one of the main reasons for Cox's departure. After all, many of the major projects Cox has been working on – filter bubbles, misinformation and hate speech – are becoming much more difficult when all data is encrypted. Cox did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Last week, Mark Zuckerberg released a privacy manifesto offering a new direction to the company, based on the encrypted messaging and interoperability of all messaging platforms overseen by Cox. And in Cox's statement, there's a hint that this could have inspired today's announcement. "As Mark said, we are turning a new page in the direction of our product, focused on an encrypted and interoperable email network. It is a product vision adapted to today's topic: a modern communication platform that balances expression, security, security and privacy. It will be a big project and we will need leaders who are excited to see the new direction come to fruition. "
It certainly sounds like Cox says he's not quite happy to see this project succeed.
And Zuckerberg may have hinted at this too in an interview with Cable last week. When he was asked about the direction change of a company as big as Facebook, Zuckerberg replied, "It takes a lot of work to align the teams and to put in place the good leaders who believe in these. priorities and be able to implement them. "
After unifying all Facebook products under Cox a year ago, Facebook has announced that it will now split them under separate leaders, similar to their previous configuration. In a note posted on Facebook's Newsroom blog, Zuckerberg said that Chris Daniels, who had been running WhatsApp since the reorganization a year ago and who had already operated Internet.org on Facebook for five years, is also leaving Facebook. Will Cathcart, who was responsible for the Facebook app, will now use WhatsApp. Fiji Simo, who operated the Facebook application while Cathcart was on paternity leave, will assume that position full time. Adam Mosseri will continue to use Instagram. And Stan Chudnovsky will continue to execute Messenger. Zuckerberg said he would not fill the Cox position and that these division leaders would report him directly. Zuckerberg and Cox will have a question-and-answer session with the company during which they will surely discuss the changes.
Many observers did not really know what to do with Zuckerberg's privacy announcement last week. To what extent was it a general philosophical change and to what extent was it simply a new business strategy? With the resignation of Cox, one thing is clear: Zuckerberg's pivot is now officially very important.
This is a story in development. If you have any information, you can contact Nicholas Thompson via DM at the address Twitter or [email protected].
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