Facebook CSO Alex Stamos to leave the company
Facebook chief security officer Alex Stamos is leaving the company, the New York Times reported on Monday.
Stamos is reportedly leaving after a fight among Facebook executives over how the social network should deal with disinformation and propaganda.
Shortly after the story broke, Stamos tweeted that he still works for the company, but is focusing more on election security and disinformation.
https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/975875310896914433
Stamos was previously the CISO at Yahoo. He left that company after engineers began scanning all incoming email on behalf of the U.S. government.
The New York Times story says that Stamos tried to quit in December after the extent of Russia’s disinformation campaigns were made public, but he has since been persuaded to stay on until August. The extended stay is reportedly designed to minimize the negative press generated by his departure.
This departure is just the latest in a series of scandals for Facebook. Most recently, the social network has come under intense scrutiny after it was revealed that political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica exploited Facebook data tied to millions of users. Stamos wrote, then deleted, numerous tweets in which he argued that Cambridge Analytica’s use of Facebook data did not constitute a “breach,” but that Facebook had been deceived on how the data was used.
