Twitter Loses Senior Officers, Gains White House and Federal Trade Commission Scrutiny

WASHINGTON, November 10, 2022 – Elon Musk’s Twitter is facing headwinds as the Federal Trade Commission and the broader administration of President Joe Biden signal scrutiny of the company, as the company’s former senior officers resign amid chaotic policy changes.

“We are tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern,” an FTC spokesperson said Thursday. “No CEO or company is above the law, and companies must follow our consent decrees. Our revised consent order gives us new tools to ensure compliance, and we are prepared to use them.”

And in a post-Election Day press conference on Wednesday, Biden generally signaled a tough stance against Musk.

Asked if Musk was “a threat to U.S. national security” and whether the federal government should “investigate his joint acquisition of Twitter with foreign governments, which include the Saudis,” Biden replied, choosing his words carefully:

“I think that Elon Musk’s cooperation and/or technical relationships with other countries is worthy of being looked at,” Biden said. “Whether or not he is doing anything inappropriate, I’m not suggesting that.  I’m suggesting that it [is] worth being looked at.  And — and — but that’s all I’ll say.”

Following up on her question, Jenny Leonard of Bloomberg asked “how,” and Biden replied, “There’s a lot of ways.”

Resignation by top Twitter officials

Thursday morning, Twitter’s now-former chief information security officer, Lea Kissner, stepped down in a Tweet. Basedon an internal company message, several outlets reported the same day that the platform’s chief compliance officer and chief privacy officer also quit.

According to The Verge, a Twitter attorney wrote the following on a company forum: “Elon has shown that his only priority with Twitter users is how to monetize them. I do not believe he cares about the human rights activists. the dissidents, our users in un-monetizable regions, and all the other users who have made Twitter the global town square you have all spent so long building, and we all love.”

Twitter’s woes don’t stop there. After Musk instituted a subscription-based verification badge, many fake accounts soon gained verification – including imposters claiming to be former President Donald Trump, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and basketball star LeBron James.

Nor is this Twitter’s only recent run-in with the FTC. In May, the watchdog ordered the platform to pay a $150 million penalty for alleged deceptive use of user data for advertising purposes.

“I expect…a big increase in the number of whistleblower complaints and other things that people might be filing (against Twitter),” said Katie Harbath, a fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center, on a web panel Thursday afternoon.

“[The FTC doesn’t] proactively put out statements regularly, so this is a pretty big deal today,” said moderator Rebecca Kern, a tech-policy reporter for Politico.

In September, Twitter’s former head of security, Peiter Zatko, testified before the U.S. Senate, alleging that the platform doesn’t adequately protect customer data and is vulnerable to meddling by foreign actors.