Rob Leathern, director of product management, said earlier
this month on Facebook's internal network that he would be leaving the company
on Dec. 30. His exit had not been previously reported.
Facebook could not immediately be reached for comment.
Leathern said in the post that he was "leaving Facebook
to work on consumer privacy beyond just ads and social media," without
disclosing where he was headed.
Leathern 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.