"Smart move" -- this was how former Facebook chief security officer Alex Stamos labeled Twitter on Wednesday, June 24, for how it responded and issued a warning over the United States President Donald Trump's tweets against the protesters in D.C., CNET's Queenie Wong reported.
"Allowing something to exist without deleting them, and then taking away the amplification, is actually the smart move," Stamos stated during the Collision from Home conference.
Nicholas Carlson, Insider global editor-in-chief, interviewed the former Facebook security chief, the report said.
The remarks from Stamos came after several critics slammed Facebook over its reactions to posts from public figures, including those from Donald Trump. However, Twitter does differently and labels a warning over one of the recent tweets from the U.S. president.
Trump and the D.C. protesters
Twitter hid a Trump tweet for giving a threat against the protesters who seemingly wanted to establish an autonomous zone in Washington, D.C. The social media company said it violated rules on "glorifying violence" and issued a "threat of harm against an identifiable group."
Wong continued, "The notices obscuring those tweets say the posts violated the site's rules, but the tweets were left up because of public interest -- users can read them by clicking a View button. But Twitter also reduced the spread of the tweets by taking away the ability to like, reply to, or share them. You can still retweet either of the posts with a comment, and they'll show up still veiled by the notices.
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More regulations
"People who wanted to find it still found it, but when they found it they found it in the context of, this is the forbidden fruit I was not allowed to have," Stamos noted. "That in a lot of ways made it much more powerful."
He was referring to these posts from Trump. The former Facebook chief is also the director of the Internet Observatory at Stanford University.
"Facebook's going to have to follow ... Twitter a little bit more here," he pointed out. "Twitter, I think, could do more too, but in both cases I think they're just gonna have to be honest and transparent about this, because the issue that's happening is they're not saying how they're making these decisions."
RIGGED 2020 ELECTION: MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS. IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 22, 2020
Also, Trump posted tweets with false claims on the mail-in ballots, with Twitter issuing a fact-checking link to these. Then, over the previous week, the social networking website labeled a misleading video shared on the
@realDonaldTrump Twitter account. The video included a "fake CNN ticker."Facebook and YouTube also took down the video, which had discussions about COVID-19. Facebook ties up with third-party fact-checking units, and places are warning notices over posts with misinformation. This is opposed to critics saying it is keeping silent on the issue.
"Unlike Twitter, we do not have a policy of putting a warning in front of posts that may incite violence, because we believe that if a post incites violence, it should be removed regardless of whether it is newsworthy, even if it comes from a politician," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said.
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