Facebook Ditching Chief Security Officer Position

Alex Stamos, Facebook’s chief security officer, is leaving the company this month for a position at Stanford University—but the social network won’t be hiring someone to fill his role, according to The New York Times. The company “does not plan to appoint a successor” for him, and has instead reassigned his duties to other employees. Facebook’s security team will no longer exist as a separate entity, and security staffers will instead work more closely with product and engineering teams, the newspaper reports. Stamos reportedly decided to leave the company amid disagreements over how the company publicly disclosed Russia’s misuse of the platform and “over organizational changes in the run-up to the 2018 midterm elections,” the Times reported. Stamos wanted the company to disclose more information about the coordinated actions by Russian actors and wanted a company restructuring to address his concerns—but those efforts were allegedly resisted by colleagues. This comes after Facebook announced that it had shut down over 30 accounts that were part of a “coordinated political influence campaign” ahead of the November midterms.