Meta's Head of PR Leaves a Company on Fire

It is difficult to blame someone for running away from a fire. The same can be applied to Silicon Valley, where the head of public relations at Meta is stepping down.

John Pinette, the Vice President of Global Communications, told employees on Friday that the company had a new External Communications Manager. His departure comes as the tech giant struggles to put out several PR fires, most notable among them the backlash from the "Facebook Papers," a series of damning reports first published by the Journal last fall that included thousands of leaked internal documents.

Pinette wrote in a post that he would be leaving Meta today. I know the team will continue to thrive as you do some of the most important work in Communications.

Meta confirmed his departure in a statement to several media outlets.

John Pinette left Meta. We are thankful for his positive contributions during an intense and significant time in the company's history, and we wish him well going forward, the company said in a Saturday email to Gizmodo.

ChrisNorton, vice president of international communications, will assume the role in the meantime. Meta has not commented publicly about why Pinette left, citing the company's policy of not commenting on personnel matters.

Pinette came to the company with more than two decades of experience in corporate communications in the tech industry, including previous positions as director of Google's Asia pan-regional communications and head of communications at Microsoft.

In September, a former employee with the civic integrity team at Facebook leaked thousands of internal employee discussions, memos, research, presentations, and other company documents to several news outlets in one of Silicon Valley's largest leaks to date.

The leaked documents, which were referred to as the Facebook Papers, showed that researchers at the photo sharing service had studied the link between children's mental health and its products and was aware of how damaging the app could be to teenage girls. The U.S. Senate wants Facebook to testify at a hearing about the harmful effects of social media on young people.

The company walked back its previously announced plans to build a version of the app specifically geared for kids, though Adam Mosseri later clarified to lawmakers that it hasn't dropped the idea entirely. Other revelations from the Facebook papers, including Facebook's insufficient policies to curb the spread of climate misinformation and internal rifts about its handling of political ads, have also drawn public scrutiny.