As Facebooks chief product officer, Cox spent the last few years leading the platforms efforts to fight misinformation, protect elections, and support at-risk countriesregions where, in Coxs words, theres a more potent risk of real-world harm because of the use of social media. Over his 13-year career, Cox had become one of the most powerful people at Facebook, behind only executives like CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg.
But then in March, Cox announced he was leavingright as Facebook was undergoing a major pivot away away from products like News Feed to private messaging.
The former executive said he thinks that encryption is great, but that the social media industry hasnt yet figured out the best way to balance protecting the privacy of peoples information and continuing to keep people safe.
In addition to Acronym, hes advising Planet Labs, an Earth imaging company whose goal is to monitor changes and trends on the planets surface every hour. The company wants to gather environmental data like how many coal plants are currently firing around the world, or how a wildfire is progressing, for example.
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