It’s exhausting accountable somebody for operating away from a burning constructing. The identical will be utilized to Silicon Valley, the place the head of public relations at Meta, Facebook’s dad or mum firm, is stepping down.

As first reported by the Wall Street Journal, Vice President of Global Communications John Pinette introduced the information to staff on Friday after overseeing the corporate’s exterior communications since 2019. His departure comes because the tech big struggles to place out a number of PR fires, most notable amongst them the fallout from the “Facebook Papers,” a collection of damning studies first printed by the Journal final fall that included hundreds of leaked inner paperwork.

“Today will be my last day at Meta,” Pinette wrote within the publish, which was reviewed by the Journal. “I know the team will continue to thrive as you do some of the most important—and most difficult—work in Communications.”

Meta later confirmed his departure in an announcement to a number of media retailers.

“John Pinette has 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 corporate mentioned in a Saturday e mail to Gizmodo.

A Meta spokesperson instructed Reuters that Chris Norton, vp of worldwide communications, will assume the position within the meantime. So far, Meta has not commented publicly about why Pinette left, citing the corporate’s coverage of not commenting on personnel issues in an announcement to Reuters.

Pinette got here to the corporate in 2019 with greater than 20 years price of expertise in company communications within the tech business, together with earlier positions as director of Google’s Asia pan-regional communications and head of communications at Microsoft.

In September, a former worker with Facebook’s now-defunct civic integrity staff, Frances Haugen, shared hundreds of inner worker discussions, memos, analysis, displays, and different firm paperwork to a number of information retailers in considered one of Silicon Valley’s largest leaks thus far.

Commonly known as the Facebook Papers, the leaked paperwork, amongst different issues, confirmed that researchers at Instagram had extensively studied the hyperlink between kids’s psychological well being and its merchandise and was keenly conscious of how damaging the app could possibly be, significantly to teenage ladies. In response, the U.S. Senate known as for Facebook to testify at a listening to about Instagram’s dangerous results on its youthful customers.

Amid vital political stress, the corporate walked again its beforehand introduced plans to construct a model of Instagram particularly geared towards children, although Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri later clarified to lawmakers that it hasn’t shelved the idea entirely. Other revelations from the Facebook papers, together with Facebook’s inadequate insurance policies to curb the unfold of local weather misinformation and inner rifts about its dealing with of political adverts, have additionally drawn public scrutiny.