Facebook loses two top executives after corporate focus on privacy



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Facebook is losing two of its top executives, Chris Cox and Chris Daniels, who served as the company's product director and WhatsApp respectively. Departures come just a week after Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, announced his intention to reshape the company around private messaging applications and after a year of scandals of great magnitude in terms of confidentiality.

Cox has been working with Facebook for over a decade and currently oversees the company's core suite of applications. The leaders of all the most important Facebook teams – Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Facebook himself – report to him. He would have been proposed as the next CEO, if Zuckerberg ever went away. Last year, recoding he called "the most important leader of Facebook, unnamed Mark Zuckerberg".

Daniels took over WhatsApp last May after the departure of Jan Koum, co-founder of WhatsApp. Previously, he ran Facebook's Facebook Internet initiative, aimed at bringing the world's Internet regions currently without connectivity. Under his leadership, WhatsApp has added transmission limits to reduce the spread of misinformation. He also announced his intention to run ads, although it is based on a promise never to broadcast them.

Zuckerberg did not notice in his blog post announcing the departures why one or the other of his executives left. Cox has posted a personal note suggesting that he may not be satisfied with the new direction Zuckerberg wanted to integrate into Facebook. Cox writes.

WhatsApp will now be led by Will Cathcart, currently responsible for the Facebook application. The Facebook application will now be managed by Fiji Simo, who currently directs the video.

No one will be named to replace Cox. Instead, says Zuckerberg, all of the company's application managers will report to him directly.

Here is the text of Zuckerberg's note announcing the change:

A word from Mark Zuckerberg

Today, Mark Zuckerberg shared the following position with employees.

Hello everyone, I want to share some important updates as we organize our company to develop the social platform focused on privacy that I mentioned in my note last week. Engaging in this new vision marks the beginning of a new chapter for us.

In this context, I am sad to share the news that Chris Cox has decided to leave the company. Chris and I have been working closely together to build our products for over ten years and I will always appreciate his deep empathy for the users of our services and the inspiring spirit that he brings to all that He does it. He has played so many central roles at Facebook: starting as an engineer in our original news feed, constituting our first human resources teams, helping to define our mission and values, leading our product teams and design, directing the Facebook application and just recently overseeing the strategy for our family of apps. Along the way, Chris has been involved in training many of the world's leading leaders who now play important roles in society, including some who will take on a greater role in our new product efforts.

Chris has been talking with me for a few years about his desire to do something else. He is one of the most talented people I know and has the potential to do whatever he wants. But after 2016, we both realized that we had too much important work to do to improve our products for society. He stayed to help us solve these problems and help us chart the path for our family of apps in the future. At this point, we have made real progress on many issues and we have a clear plan for our apps, focused on creating private messaging, stories and groups, basics of experience, including Enabling encryption and interoperability between our services. As we approach this next major chapter, Chris decided it was time to step back from the leadership of these teams. I will miss Chris so much, but I am deeply grateful for all he has done to build this place and serve our community.

Meanwhile, as we approach this new chapter, Chris Daniels has also decided to leave the company. Chris has also done a great job in many roles, including leading our business development team, including Internet.org, which has helped more than 100 million people access the Internet, and most recently at WhatsApp, where he helped define the economic model. for our courier services in the future. Chris is one of the clearest and most principled business thinkers I've encountered and the diversity of challenges he's helped us navigate is impressive. I really enjoyed working with Chris and I'm sure he will do a great job whatever his decision.

While it is sad to lose such good people, it also creates opportunities for more great leaders who are motivated on the way to take on new and bigger roles.

I am happy that Will Cathcart will become the new manager of WhatsApp. Will is one of the most talented leaders in our society. He has always focused on solving the most important issues for people and has understood the challenges and compromises we face. More recently, he did a great job with the Facebook application, where he led our shift to meaningful social interactions and dramatically improved the performance and reliability of the application. During his career here, Will has helped lead our teams focused on security and integrity, and he is a firm believer in providing end-to-end encryption to all users around the world through our services.

I am also pleased that Fiji Simo is the new Facebook application manager. She is one of our most talented product and organization leaders. She is passionate about creating communities and supporting creativity, and focuses on building strong teams and developing future leaders. She has played a key role in creating many aspects of the Facebook application, including directing our work on video and advertising. She believes deeply in helping people to benefit more from the networks they have built. She has been leading this team for much of last year while Will was on parental leave and is the best person to lead this effort.

Our application family strategy was jointly managed by Chris Cox and Javier Olivan. Chris managed application managers directly and Javi was responsible for all core product services that work across all our applications, including security and integrity, analytics, growth, and ads. Javi will now seek to identify where our applications should be more integrated. Javi is an incredibly thoughtful, strategic and analytical leader, and I am confident that this work will continue. Since we have now decided on the basic direction of our family of apps for the next few years, I do not plan to immediately name someone to fill Chris' role in the short term. Instead, Facebook (Fiji Simo), Instagram (Adam Mosseri), Messenger (Stan Chudnovsky) and WhatsApp (Will Cathcart) will report to me directly, and our Marketing Director (Antonio Lucio) will report directly to Sheryl.

This is a significant change at the dawn of the next chapter of our work, which aims to establish a social foundation for the future focused on the protection of privacy. I am deeply grateful for all that Chris Cox and Chris Daniels have accomplished here, and I look forward to working with Will and Fiji in their new roles as well as all those who will play a critical role in achieving this vision. We have so much important work to do and I am excited to continue working to empower people to build a community and bring the world together.

Correction: March 14 at 5 pm ET: WhatsApp plans to start running ads in his reports, Status, but he has not yet started doing so, as originally stated.

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