Facebook’s former security chief says Elon Musk’s Twitter would be like ‘watching a baby play with a blender’

Alex Stamos made the comments after Mr Musk said he would allow Donald Trump back on Twitter once he owns the platform

(AFP via Getty Images)

Facebook’s former chief security officer has said that Elon Musk’s ideas to regulate Twitter would “give him a stroke” and is like “watching a baby play with a blender from behind a plexiglass barrier.”

Alex Stamos, who worked for the company now known as Meta between 2015 and 2018, made the comments after Mr Musk said he would revoke the permanent ban of former president Donald Trump from Twitter.

Mr Musk said the ban was a “morally bad decision, to be clear, and foolish in the extreme”. Mr Trump was banned after the 6 January riot at the US Capitol.

In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, the then-president used social media to repeatedly make false claims that the election had been rigged in favour of Joe Biden, and that he was the genuine victor.

"If there are tweets that are wrong and bad, those should be either deleted or made invisible, and a suspension, a temporary suspension is appropriate but not a permanent ban”, Mr Musk added.

In a lengthy thread, Mr Stamos said that “watching Elon try to openly recreate several decades of trust and safety work by tens of thousands of people from first principles is likely to give me a stroke.”

The computer scientist said that the problems Mr Musk keeps bringing up are less than 0.1 per cent of Twitter’s content moderation decisions and that “non-controversial 99.9% of Twitter moderation decisions can not and will not be guided by law in the US”.

Mr Musk has said that his “preference is to hew close to the laws of countries in which Twitter operates. If the citizens want something banned, then pass a law to do so, otherwise it should be allowed”.

It is unclear if Mr Musk means to adhere to the First Amendment, which permits speech that might be regulated in the UK and Europe, or whether Twitter would vary based on the geographical location it is used in.

However, Mr Stamos criticised Mr Musk’s viewpoint. “’Just following the law’ outside of the US is tricky if you have any respect for human rights; some of the worst actors online are authoritarian states that use the dual tools of online propaganda and censorship to control their populace, including Elon’s partner the KSA”, he wrote.

Even if Mr Musk only followed the law in democracies, Mr Stamos continued, it would be a “mismatch” between European legislation such as the Digital Services Act because of Mr Musk’s intentions to, for example, encrypt Twitter’s direct messages.

Yesterday, Mr Musk said that he was “exactly aligned” with the DSA having spoken to Thierry Breton, the Commissioner for the Internal Market.

“I really think, uh, I agree with everything you said, really. I think we’re very much of the same mind, and um, and uh, y’know, I think anything that, uh, my companies can do that would be beneficial to Europe, we want to do that, I just want to say”, Mr Musk said in a video posted by Mr Breton.

“The Twitter T&S team is not a bunch of censorious liberals as he assumes. If he actually spoke to them, he would realize that they are trying to balance a lot of important equities at scale and that each decision involves hard tradeoffs that don’t easily fit in a tweet”, Mr Stamos said.

Mr Musk has repeatedly criticised Twitter for having a “strong left wing bias” and targeted employees such as Vijaya Gadde directly about it, despite his $44 billion purchase of the company being reliant on not disparage[ing] the Company or any of its Representatives.”

Twitter repeatedly refused to define who ‘represents’ the company and why its current employees are seemingly fair game for the billionaire’s criticism. Twitter did not respond to a request for comment from The Independent regarding its “left wing bias”. Representatives for Mr Musk have not responded to The Independent’s multiple requests for comment.

Elon Musk has been criticised by online speech experts for not understanding content moderation, an incomplete grasp of free speech under the First Amendment and, with regards to the DSA specifically, supporting a law that Twitter itself has fought against because it views it as censorious.