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Facebook security chief will leave the company amid Russian disinformation scandal
Facebook Inc.’s chief security officer, Alex Stamos, will leave the company, according to a report published in the New York Times.
It seems Stamos (pictured) had disagreed with other executives at the company over the handling of the Russian misinformation campaign that partly took place on the social network last year. According to the report, Stamos’ role had changed in December last year, but he will be out of the door come August.
Stamos’ posts on Twitter today, however, don’t acknowledge plans to depart. “Despite the rumors, I’m still fully engaged with my work at Facebook, he tweeted. “It’s true that my role did change. I’m currently spending more time exploring emerging security risks and working on election security.” Still, Reuters tweeted that Facebook “has already taken away his responsibilities to counter government-sponsored disinformation.”
It’s also said that Facebook has had quite a security shake-up, with all 120 employees from the security department now working on product and infrastructure teams. It’s not known if Facebook has created another security team or if security is being integrated into other departments.
Reports suggest that Stamos butted heads with other execs at Facebook, wanting a more thorough investigation of Russian interference in the U.S. elections via disinformation on the platform and also more transparency about the problem.
A tweet he posted over the weekend encapsulated that: “There are a lot of big problems that the big tech companies need to be better at fixing,” he wrote. “We have collectively been too optimistic about what we build and our impact on the world.”
He added that “I have always felt that the individuals who actually work on these problems should be engaged publicly. Doing so means balancing one’s personal beliefs with their responsibility to their co-workers and employers. I don’t know how to do that in this media environment.”
Stamos has been at Facebook since 2015, joining the company after leaving his position as chief information security officer at Yahoo Inc. Facebook has yet to comment publicly about his departure.
Image: Web Summit via Flickr
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