NEW DELHI: Rob Leathern, Facebook’s chief of advertising integrity, who handled the company’s ad products, stepped down on Friday after serving the company for four years.

“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!” tweeted Rob Leathern.

Facebook has been mired in controversy regarding misinformation on COVID-19 vaccines, US presidential election, anti-competitive behavior (control over Instagram and WhatsApp).

Earlier, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) had filed twin antitrust lawsuits against Facebook alleging that it had abused its dominance in the digital marketplace and engaged in anti-competitive behavior.

Regarding the misinformation on US presidential elections, Leathern defended his team and the company.

“Despite 2020’s additional bubble of uncertainty, the teams I ran or influenced did a lot of very good work, including related to the US election where a lot of work was the culmination of a huge amount of effort over several years,” he added.

Talking about his future endeavor Leathern tweeted, “What’s next? While I’m not going to be working on ads directly, it will be a part of what I work on as I will be staying in the tech/data/privacy space. I will share more about where I’m going in the next week or two,” without disclosing where he headed next. (ANI)