Several Democrat senators, including Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal, sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) asking it to investigate the changes made by Elon Musk to Twitter.
We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.
The senators said that the changes are “alarming.”
“Twitter’s new Chief Executive Officer, Elon Musk, has taken alarming steps that have undermined the integrity and safety of the platform, and announced new features despite clear warnings those changes would be abused for fraud, scams, and dangerous impersonation. According to media reports, in prioritizing increasing profits and cutting costs, Twitter’s executives have dismissed key staff, scaled back internal privacy reviews, and forced engineers to take on legal liability for new changes — preventing managers and staff tasked with overseeing safety and legal compliance from reviewing the product updates,” the senators wrote in the letter.
They further claimed that the layoff of the company’s cybersecurity and privacy teams put user data at risk.
“[K]ey Twitter executives responsible for the platform’s privacy, cybersecurity, and integrity resigned last week, further calling into question whether personal data is adequately protected from misuse or breach while the company explores new products and monetization strategies,” the letter said.
The senators claimed that hate has increased on the platform, although they did not provide evidence to support their claim.
“[Musk’s] misguided changes come at a time when Twitter is facing coordinated campaigns of racist, misogynistic, and antisemitic harassment, attempting to exploit the change in ownership to spread hate and vitriol,” they wrote.
Last week, the FTC said it would be “tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern. No CEO or company is above the law, and companies must follow our consent decrees.”
