A Facebook executive learned a valuable lesson about using Twitter after he publicly contradicted the Mueller investigation

On Friday, Facebook's vice president of ads, Rob Goldman, tweeted that key facts about Russia's efforts to interfere in the 2016 US election were "still not well understood."
Goldman's tweet made it sound as if he was contradicting the work done by Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating the interference.
After Facebook issued a statement on Sunday, Goldman published an apology on Monday evening, saying, "The Special Counsel has far more information about what happened [than] I do."

"Never tweet," a common refrain among people on Twitter, is essentially used to encourage people to think before they tweet.

Facebook's vice president of ads, Rob Goldman, learned this the hard way over the long holiday weekend.

On Friday, roughly eight hours after Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russia's interference in the 2016 US election, published a 37-page indictment of Russian operatives, Goldman sounded off on Twitter, despite getting no approval from Facebook's communications staff or anyone else from upper management.

The problem with Goldman's tweets, basically, was that they seemed to contradict the work done by Mueller and his investigative team — the tweets analyzed the election interference solely through the lens of advertisements, not taking into account the vast amount of information Mueller has, especially compared with Goldman or anyone at Facebook.

Very excited to see the Mue... @ Rob Goldman

Most of the coverage of Rus... @ Rob Goldman

The majority of the Russian... @ Rob Goldman

The next day, President Donald Trump cited Goldman's tweets twice within five minutes.

The Fake News Media never f... @ Donald J. Trump

#emo#I have seen all of the Rus... @ Donald J. Trump

As the social-media company continued to face blowback for the tweets, Joel Kaplan, Facebook's VP of public policy, released a statement on Sunday night.

"Nothing we found contradicts the Special Counsel's indictments," it said. "Any suggestion otherwise is wrong."

On Monday, Goldman posted a similar message to his coworkers. Here's his full statement, courtesy of Wired:

"I wanted to apologize for having tweeted my own view about Russian interference without having it reviewed by anyone internally. The tweets were my own personal view and not Facebook's. I conveyed my view poorly. The Special Counsel has far more information about what happened [than] I do — so seeming to contradict his statements was a serious mistake on my part.

"To those of you who have reached out this weekend to offer your support, thank you. It means more than you know. And to all of you who have worked so hard over the last six months to demonstrate that we understand our responsibility to prevent abuse on Facebook — and are working hard to do better in the future — my deepest apologies."