Facebook’s staunchest privacy advocates are disappearing

Image: Thibault Camus/AP/REX/Shutterstock

As Facebook continues to struggle with its image post-Cambridge Analytica, another one of the company’s most public privacy advocates has left the company. 

Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos formalized his departure Wednesday, when he announced that he had accepted a teaching position at Stanford and will leave Facebook later this month.

Though not unexpected, the three-year Facebook veteran’s plans have been known for months, Stamos’ departure raises questions about who in the company will take on the role of defending users’ privacy rights internally.

Stamos was widely regarded as one of Facebook’s staunchest privacy advocates internally. 

The New York Times reported earlier this year that, at times, he had clashed with other executives over the handling of security issues. And in a memo to staff, published by BuzzFeed News last week, the executive warned employees to take seriously complaints about the company’s product being “creepy” and urged restraint in data collection.

“We need to intentionally not collect data where possible, and to keep it only as long as we are using it to serve people,” he wrote. “We need to listen to people (including internally) when they tell us a feature is creepy or point out a negative impact we are having in the world.”

Facebook doesn’t have plans to appoint a new chief security officer, according to The New York Times. 

Stamos’ departure follows the departure of two other top execs also known for being strong advocates for users privacy: WhatsApp cofounders Brian Acton and Jan Koum. 

Acton left Facebook last year for the Signal Foundation, the organization that oversees the privacy-centric messaging app Signal. And, in a particularly embarrassing move for Facebook, Acton tweeted #DeleteFacebook  following the fallout from the company’s Cambridge Analytica scandal. (Notably, he didn’t follow his own advice, at least not entirely. His Facebook page is still up, though it has been renamed after Albus Dumbledore.) 

Koum also exited the company in April, leaving his position as WhatsApp CEO and his spot on Facebook’s board of directors. Koum had also clashed with Facebook leadership over its handling of privacy issues. He and Acton were known inside the company for being opposed to collecting user data for targeted advertising, The Washington Post reported.

Facebook is only now beginning to realize its full ambitions with WhatsApp. The company announced this week that it would expand WhatsApp Business, its enterprise service that lets companies chat with customers. The company also confirmed that it plans to introduce advertising to WhatsApp Status later this year, TechCrunch reported. The move will mark the first time WhatsApp has included in-app advertising.

That may seem like a natural evolution for Facebook. As we previously noted, WhatsApp is Facebook’s biggest untapped asset. And at a time when Facebook is maxing out its ability to monetize its core service, it’s inevitable the company would look to start squeezing cash out of WhatsApp.

That the move just happens to also coincide with Facebook’s ongoing privacy scandals and the departure of some of its most vocal privacy advocates, you can make of that what you want. But it’s certainly not the best look for Facebook, which is currently in the midst of a massive apology tour.

To be clear, it’s not to say that there aren’t people left at the company who care about users’ privacy. Zuckerberg and other top execs have repeatedly maintained that they’re committed to fixing previous errors and increasing transparency.

But with three of its most vocal and longtime privacy defenders leaving the company in less than a year, it’s not clear who at Facebook will become the public face of privacy rights, particularly now that it’s under increased pressure from shareholders to deliver more ad dollars.