Mark Zuckerberg needs to give up some of his control of Facebook and hire a new CEO, a former Facebook executive said Tuesday.
“There is a legitimate argument that he has too much power. He needs to give up some of that power,” Alex Stamos, Facebook’s former chief security officer, said about his old boss while speaking at the Collision tech conference in Toronto, Canada.
Stamos added that “Facebook needs to have an internal revolution on the culture of how products are built” and Zuckerberg should lead that charge.
“If I was him I would go hire a new CEO for the company,” Stamos said.
He suggested Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft, could be a good fit as an “adult who has been through this before.”
Smith has been with Microsoft since 1993 and became general counsel in 2002 as the company worked to resolved antitrust claims in the United States and abroad. Zuckerberg reportedly reached out to Smith and others for advice in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Facebook has increasingly drawn scrutiny for the outsize influence it holds over society. Earlier this month, Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes wrote an op-ed calling for its breakup.
“He should hire a CEO that can help signal both internally and externally that the culture has to change,” Stamos said.
Stamos said Zuckerberg is already acting as the company’s chief product officer with the recent departure of Christopher Cox, who had held that role. Stamos said he should maintain that position: “That’s where his passion is.”
