Facebook's scandals may have taken their toll.
Chris Cox, the company's chief product officer who's been with Facebook for 13 years, announced Thursday he was leaving the company. He was joined by WhatsApp head Chris Daniels — two departures that may signal some displeasure with Mark Zuckerberg's new privacy-focused plans, Wired suggests.
Last week, Zuckerberg unveiled an ambitious yet vague plan to spin Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp into a "privacy-focused communications platform." Cox mentioned the project in his goodbye message to Facebook, and said it needs "leaders who are excited to see the new direction through." As Wired notes, that sounds like Cox wasn't thrilled about it.
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Still, Zuckerberg only had good things to say about Cox and Daniels in a public message about their departures. Cox was one of Facebook's first 15 engineers, and was characterized as "the new Mark Zuckerberg" in a recent Wired profile. Daniels had overseen WhatsApp since its founders left the company amid "disagreements" with Zuckerberg last year, The New York Times notes.
Zuckerberg's announcement was seemingly prompted by more than a year of scandals, during which Facebook essentially sold user data and leaked a lot more of it. Cox marks the first top executive to leave after the wave of disasters, though Zuckerberg mentioned in his Thursday message to employees that Cox had thought about leaving since 2016.
