Latest in the Facebook saga: company loses its Chief of Advertising Integrity

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Rob Leathern, Facebook chief of advertising integrity who handled the company’s ad products around sensitive subjects such as politics and coronavirus misinformation, left the company earlier this week. According to Reuters, Rob had mentioned his departure on Facebook’s internal network earlier in December.

On 2 January, Rob tweeted his departure and mentioned he was moving to work on consumer privacy beyond ads and social media without mentioning where he was heading.

After almost 4 years, I made the difficult decision to leave Facebook, and 12/30/20 was my last day at FB. I've had a great experience in a difficult, fun, fast-growing and impactful role at the company working with amazing people. I was honored to call them colleagues! (1/12)
— Rob Leathern (@robleathern) January 1, 2021

Rob was often the public face of the company’s controversial political advertising policies. Prior to the Nov. 3 U.S. election, Facebook was heavily criticized for allowing misleading claims and conspiracy theories to spread widely on its platforms.

In November, Leathern had tweeted that Facebook did not have “the technical ability in the short term to enable political ads by state or by advertiser.” Subsequently, Facebook lifted a temporary post-election ban on political ads in Georgia ahead of the Jan. 5 runoff that will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate.

According to Reuters, Facebook could not immediately be reached for comment.

Main photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

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