By Deepa Seetharaman
This article is being republished as part of our daily
reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S.
print edition of The Wall Street Journal (June 15, 2018).
Facebook Inc.'s top policy and communications executive, Elliot
Schrage, is stepping down, ending a decadelong tenure at the
social-media giant as it faces intense scrutiny for its business
practices and commitment to privacy.
Mr. Schrage has been one of the key architects of Facebook's
strategy for various controversies over the past two years,
including most recently the company's response to news that the
political firm Cambridge Analytica improperly obtained data on 87
million Facebook users. He was involved in several of Facebook's
public-relations missteps in recent years and was also credited
internally with encouraging the company to be more transparent in
how it addressed some criticism.
Mr. Schrage, 57 years old, reported directly to Chief Operating
Officer Sheryl Sandberg, whom he followed to Facebook from Alphabet
Inc.'s Google in 2008, and served as one of her top allies.
In a Facebook post, Mr. Schrage said he will be on hand to
search for his successor and will continue to advise top
executives, including Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and Ms.
Sandberg, after he steps down.
Top internal candidates to replace him include Joel Kaplan,
Facebook's head of global public policy, and Rachel Whetstone, the
former top communications and policy executive at Google and Uber
Technologies Inc. who joined Facebook a year ago, according to
people familiar with the matter. Facebook is also looking
externally for the role and one of the people said the company
could bring in a political heavyweight.
Mr. Kaplan and Ms. Whetstone didn't immediately respond to
requests for comment.
A Facebook spokeswoman said Mr. Schrage initially discussed
leaving the company before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, but
stayed on to help the company deal with the heightened scrutiny
around misinformation and fabricated news articles on the
platform.
"Leading policy and communications for hyper growth technology
companies is a joy -- but it's also intense and leaves little room
for much else," Mr. Schrage said in a Facebook post announcing the
decision on Thursday. He declined to comment beyond his
statement.
Ms. Sandberg, in a comment to the post, called Mr. Schrage "one
of the most creative and strategic people I have worked with."
Mr. Zuckerberg said in a separate comment: "You've made an
extraordinary contribution to Facebook -- dealing with some of our
toughest challenges and helping enable some of our biggest
opportunities."
Mr. Schrage helped build Facebook's policy and communications
team from fewer than a dozen people to hundreds. As it has grown,
the company has at times struggled to strike the right tone in
addressing mounting concerns about its role and ability to
influence its users.
Mr. Schrage, like many senior Facebook leaders, initially
underestimated the extent to which bad actors could manipulate
Facebook's platform by creating fake accounts or mining information
about users.
At a conference of public-relations professionals shortly after
the 2016 election, for example, Mr. Schrage played down the role of
fabricated news articles on Facebook in shaping the outcome. A few
days later, Mr. Zuckerberg made similar comments publicly, saying
the theory was "a pretty crazy idea."
"Elliot's point was that it was impossible to draw conclusions
so quickly after the election given there were so many possible
causes for the outcome," a Facebook spokeswoman said of the
episode, which was earlier reported by BuzzFeed News. Mr.
Zuckerberg has since walked back his remarks as well.
More recently, Facebook has been under fire for failing to fully
explain its handling of user data.
Last week, for example, Facebook was forced to disclose that it
shared user data with device makers, including Chinese tech company
Huawei, following lawmakers' inquiries and reports by the New York
Times and others. On Friday, following a report in The Wall Street
Journal, Facebook confirmed that some companies, including the
Royal Bank of Canada, were offered extended access to friends' data
beyond the 2015 cutoff point for all other developers.
Mr. Schrage came under fire this week for his remarks to an
investor from the firm Arjuna Capital. The investor, Natasha Lamb,
wrote in an Financial Times column that she asked why Facebook
wouldn't respond to her questions about fabricated news articles,
election interference and hate speech. Mr. Schrage, she wrote, told
her she was "not nice."
A Facebook spokeswoman said on Thursday that Mr. Schrage
apologized for those remarks.
Internally, Mr. Schrage has at times pushed executives to better
explain how Facebook works and manages its responsibilities to its
more than two billion users. In recent months, Facebook executives,
including Mr. Zuckerberg, have repeatedly said the company needs to
take "a broader view of its responsibility."
Mr. Schrage pushed Facebook to launch a blog, called Hard
Questions, so the company could respond publicly to amplified
scrutiny of its practices, despite some hesitation by other
Facebook managers and executives about being so open about
hot-button topics, people familiar with the matter said. He also
championed the creation of an election commission, populated by
independent researchers who can study Facebook's effect on
elections and publish papers without Facebook's approval.
"I have had more than just a front row seat to one of the most
important developments in human history, but the chance to be in
the arena," Mr. Schrage wrote Thursday in his post. "That brings
extraordinary opportunity and it demands responsibility and
accountability. And when we take and exercise that responsibility
well, we can achieve great things."
--Betsy Morris contributed to this article.
Write to Deepa Seetharaman at Deepa.Seetharaman@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 15, 2018 02:47 ET (06:47 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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