2 Facebook execs leave in shake-up
Facebook’s top executive ranks underwent another change Thursday, with the loss of the company’s chief product officer and the head of its WhatsApp messaging service.
The departures follow two years of scandals for Facebook around data privacy and disinformation. The issues have buffeted the Silicon Valley company, causing internal turmoil and a redirection in strategy.
Last week, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive, announced that Facebook would shift away from public sharing of posts and focus on private conversations across the company’s messaging services — WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger. The decision, which involves knitting together three of the world’s largest digital communications services, was controversial internally, according to current and former employees who were not authorized to speak publicly.
The two executives leaving Facebook are Chris Cox, chief product officer and one of the social network’s highest-ranking executives, and Chris Daniels, head of WhatsApp.
Cox has long been in Zuckerberg’s inner circle. He joined Facebook in 2005 as one of the company’s first 15 software engineers and was instrumental in building the News Feed, the stream of posts that people see when they log into the service.
Daniels has watched over WhatsApp after the messaging service’s founders, Jan Koum and Brian Acton, left the company over disagreements with Zuckerberg last year.