An ex-Facebook executive called Mark Zuckerberg's actions 'haphazard' and said Facebook should have acted more like Twitter in addressing Trump's posts

• Alex Stamos, Facebook's former chief security officer, said Facebook's approach to handling political speech has been "haphazard," in an interview with CNBC.
• Facebook has seen backlash from users, advertisers, and employees in response to CEO Mark Zuckerberg's decision to not fact-check political ads or take action against posts from Trump regarding the George Floyd protests.
• Stamos said Zuckerberg should be thinking more about the potential Facebook has to amplify speech when making such decisions rather than viewing interference with political content as being censorship.
• Twitter has done well when it comes to handling political speech, Stamos said.

Alex Stamos, Facebook's former chief security officer, says Facebook has taken a somewhat "haphazard" approach to handling political speech.

Stamos recently appeared on CNBC's "Power Lunch" to discuss Facebook's challenges and recently published civil rights audit, which the firm shared in full on Wednesday. The audit found that although the social giant has made progress in some ways, it has also made "painful" decisions that have had detrimental ramifications for civil rights.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's stance that the tech giant should not be the arbiter of truth and therefore should not fact-check political ads or posts from politicians has been met with particular controversy.

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Facebook also caught backlash for its decision to not take any action against a post from President Trump in late May regarding the George Floyd protests that included the phrase, "When the looting starts, the shooting starts." That served as a flashpoint in the debate over how Facebook should handle political speech. At least one employee resigned over the company's actions, and other employees publicly voiced their disapproval.

Regardless of Zuckerberg's view, Facebook's big challenge, Stamos said, is that Facebook is now the "arbiter of what is acceptable speech," putting it at the center of the controversy over how political speech should be handled on social media.

"Because there is really no legal framework here, this is up to Facebook themselves," Stamos told CNBC. "And they are kind of vacillating back and forth as the political winds shift in making these decisions, it seems in seems in a little bit of a haphazard manner."

Although Stamos acknowledged Facebook's efforts to combat election interference, he said that Zuckerberg's view that interfering with posts from politicians was censorship is a mistaken one.

"I think that's the mistake that Mark keeps on making, that he made first in his Georgetown speech last year," Stamos said, referencing a talk by Zuckerberg that has served as a manifesto for how Facebook treats political speech. "He is considering only that whether or not the speech exists or not, and whether or not Facebook should be seen as censoring, in some cases, democratically elected leaders."

During that speech, Zuckerberg said: "We don't do this to help politicians, but because we think people should be able to see for themselves what politicians are saying. And if content is newsworthy, we also won't take it down even if it would otherwise conflict with many of our standards."

But Stamos said he disagrees. Instead of thinking of Facebook's actions as potential censorship, Zuckerberg should be thinking more about Facebook's power when it comes to amplifying content from politicians, he said.

"When really it should be about what kind of capability does Facebook provide people to amplify their speech well beyond what would have been possible five, 10 years ago before everybody was on social media."

Stamos pointed to Twitter as an example of a social media company that has handled political speech well. Twitter labeled the same post from Trump regarding the George Floyd protests with a warning saying it glorified violence, and also added fact-checking links to tweets from Trump that included falsehoods about mail-in ballots.

"[Twitter] will limit the spread of that message, so that they have found kind of a middle way," Stamos said. "And I think that's the kind of middle way that if Mark had adopted a couple of months ago, Facebook would be in way better shape right now."