Facebook’s Policy Chief Quit Last Year. He Still Hasn’t Left.

(Bloomberg) -- When Elliot Schrage announced his resignation last June, the buzz was that the Facebook Inc. executive—who had shaped the company’s public messaging during a decade marked by privacy lapses and political pressure—had finally fallen on his sword.

Facebook had been grappling with one controversy after another, capped off by the Cambridge Analytica data-sharing scandal and the misinformation campaigns that flourished on the social network during the 2016 U.S. election. Facebook’s apology tour—a promise to “take a broader view of our responsibility”—was starting to lose impact as the criticism piled up. As the company’s lead communicator, Schrage had influenced Facebook’s decision making and public response to both incidents, perhaps more than anybody else. At the time of his resignation, he looked like the fall guy, a view reinforced a few months later when he took the heat off of his boss, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, whose judgment the New York Times had called into question when Facebook hired a Washington firm to do opposition research on its opponents. Months after announcing his resignation, Schrage took responsibility for hiring the firm in a public blog post.

"It’s time to start a new chapter," Schrage wrote on his Facebook page in June. 

Schrage eventually left his role, and helped find his own replacement—but he hasn’t left the building, according to people close to the company. Instead, in the 15 months since announcing his resignation, Schrage has been quietly helping the company on a number of initiatives as a full-time employee with a new title: vice president of special projects. In July 2019, he helped prepare Facebook executive David Marcus before his testimony in front of Congress to explain why the company wants to build a cryptocurrency, called Libra. He sat through two days of testimony right behind Marcus's hot seat, just like he had for Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg during his 2018 Congressional testimony on privacy.

Libra may be the most high-profile (and controversial) project Schrage is working on, but it’s not the only one, the people familiar with the situation said. He’s also working with researchers that are using Facebook data to study social media’s impact on elections, and one of his bigger roles has been to liaise with the city of Menlo Park, California—home to Facebook’s ever-expanding headquarters—on issues like affordable housing and transportation. The people, who asked not to be named discussing internal matters, said Schrage is no longer in meetings with the communications staff, and doesn’t travel with Zuckerberg or Sandberg like he used to. But he’s still a regular attendee at Zuckerberg’s weekly company-wide Q&A meetings with employees, and even has his own conference room in Facebook’s San Francisco office, a perk reserved for vice presidents at the social network operator.

For almost a decade, Schrage was one of the most influential people inside Facebook headquarters. A big-name hire from Google, Schrage took over Facebook’s policy and communications team in 2008 and became a close confidant to both Zuckerberg and Sandberg, often accompanying them on international trips. His final two years in the role reflected Facebook’s new reality. Among many other things, he helped the company create an independent elections commission, and pushed to create a “Hard Questions” blog series meant to spur discussion about Facebook’s impact on society. 

When Schrage announced his departure last summer, though, it was viewed by many as a necessary changing of the guard. Schrage had overseen communications during Facebook’s meteoric rise, but he was also at the helm during the most pivotal—and damaging—chapters of Facebook’s history. It was Schrage who ultimately took responsibility for hiring Definers, the firm that pushed negative stories about Facebook’s political opponents, causing a deluge of criticism. Schrage also pressure-tested the line that Zuckerberg used following the 2016 U.S. election, when the CEO said it was “crazy” to think fake news might have had an impact on the outcome. Zuckerberg would eat those words for years, and later said that he regretted saying them.

It’s not uncommon for executives to announce they’re leaving a company, but stay on the payroll and help with necessary transitions. It happens at Facebook all the time. The company’s longtime VP of partnerships, Dan Rose, did this after he announced his departure last year. So did product boss Chris Cox when he left earlier this year. Schrage himself said that he’d stay on after his resignation to hire his successor, then advise Facebook leadership on “particular projects.”

Typically when executives stay on as an “adviser,” though, they quickly fade into the distance. What’s less common is when executives announce their departure, find their replacement, then stick around as full-time employees. 

“When Elliot announced he would be stepping down from the role of VP of policy and communications, he explained that he would manage the transition and then remain as an adviser on particular projects that help the company and communities,” a company spokeswoman said. “Elliot continues to advise on specific projects that map to his areas of expertise—fostering independent research on social media’s role in elections, supporting local Bay Area communities, and increasing global access to financial services.”

Though it may be surprising that he’s still around, Schrage is no longer responsible for dealing with the kind of turmoil he used to handle on a regular basis. That doesn’t mean the chaos has subsided— in the 11 months since Schrage hired his replacement, former U.K. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, Facebook has been hit with a $5 billion FTC fine, two separate antitrust investigations, and has seen multiple presidential candidates—and one of its co-founders—call for the company to be broken up. 

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Alistair Barr

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