Rob Leathern, director of product management, left Facebook on December 30
Facebook’s head of advertising integrity, who has dealt with the company’s advertising products around sensitive issues such as coronavirus policy and misinformation, left this week, according to a company internal post seen by Reuters on Friday. market.
Rob Leathern, director of product management, said earlier this month on Facebook’s internal network that he would leave the company on December 30. His departure had not been previously reported.
Facebook did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com’s questions on Friday about its departure.
Leathern said in an internal post that he was “leaving Facebook to work on consumer privacy beyond just ads and social media”, without revealing where he was going.
In a series of tweets on Friday, Leathern wrote that on Facebook he ‘had a great experience in a difficult, fun, fast-growing and impactful role at the company, working with amazing people’.
“Although I don’t work directly on ads, it will be part of what I do, as I will be in the technology / data / privacy space,” he continued.
Leathern said in an internal post that he was ‘leaving Facebook to work on consumer privacy beyond just ads and social media’, without revealing where he was going.
Leathern promised to share more about his next steps ‘in the coming weeks’.
He had been working on Facebook since February 2017, according to his LinkedIn page. His previous experience included passages on LinkedIn and a startup he founded.
Leathern used to be the public face of Facebook’s controversial advertising policies.
Before the November 3 election in the U.S., Facebook was heavily criticized for refusing to check the facts of political ads, leading to accusations that it was allowing misleading allegations and conspiracy theories to spread widely on its platforms.
In November, Leathern tweeted that Facebook lacked “the short-term technical capacity to allow political ads by state or by advertiser”.
Subsequently, Facebook lifted the temporary post-election ban on political ads in Georgia before the January 5 run-off, which will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate.
Asked what has changed since Leathern’s tweet, a Facebook spokeswoman said the company has decided to implement a temporary solution in which advertisers can be manually enabled to serve ads.
The ban on political ads in other states will remain, the social media giant said in a blog. A Facebook spokeswoman declined to say when this general ban would be lifted.
In November, Leathern tweeted that Facebook lacked ‘short-term technical capacity to allow political ads by state or by advertiser’
Subsequently, Facebook lifted the temporary post-election ban on political ads in Georgia before the January 5 runoff, which will determine which party controls the US Senate.
Both Facebook and Google introduced pauses in political ads after the presidential election as part of measures to combat misinformation and other abuses on the websites.
Google suspended the pause last month, saying it no longer considered the post-election period to be a ‘delicate event’.
Facebook product manager Sarah Schiff wrote on the blog that the company has heard comments in recent weeks from ‘experts and advertisers across the political spectrum on the importance of expressing a voice and using our tools to reach voters before the second round of Georgia elections’.
On the blog, Schiff said Facebook would ‘prioritize the integration of advertisers with direct involvement in these elections, including campaigns, state and local electoral authorities and state and national political parties’.
Leathern leaves the company just a few weeks after Facebook launched Apple in a series of full-page newspaper ads about the iPhone’s privacy changes that the social media giant says will devastate small businesses that rely on targeted ads – and accused the other technology giant of competitive behavior.
At the heart of the matter are changes in Apple’s iOS 14.4, which will go live next year and require users to give permission for apps to track them for advertising purposes. Facebook says Apple’s personalized ad platform will be exempt from the new request requirement that the iPhone maker plans to impose on other companies.
Facebook accused Apple of engaging in anti-competitive practices with the changes, which they say will cut small businesses from desperately needed customers.
But Facebook has also been at the center of important antitrust lawsuits, including one by the Federal Trade Commission and at least 48 states.
The FTC accuses the social media giant of abusing its dominance in the market.
‘Facebook’s actions to consolidate and maintain its monopoly to deny consumers the benefits of competition. Our goal is to reverse Facebook’s anti-competitive conduct and restore competition so that innovation and free competition can thrive, ‘said Ian Conner, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, in a statement.
As a result, the FTC is seeking a permanent lawsuit that would require Facebook to dispose of its assets, effectively separating them. These assets include Instagram, which bought for $ 1 billion in 2012, and WhatsApp, which purchased for $ 19 billion in 2014.