A lawyer on Twitter’s in-house legal team urged company engineers to seek ethics advice or contact a whistleblower support organization if they face pressure to self-certify that privacy requirements are met under a consent decree the company is under with the Federal Trade Commission, now that billionaire Elon Musk owns the company.
“I anticipate that all of you will be pressured by management into pushing out changes that will likely lead to major incidents,” the lawyer said in an anonymous post on an internal company Slack channel that was reproduced by The Verge. “If you feel uncomfortable about anything you’re being asked to do, you can call Twitter’s Ethics Hotline … or submit a report at ethicshelpline.twitter.com.”
The lawyer also said engineers could contact a nonprofit organization called Whistleblower Aid.
“You may also remember that Mudge reached out to” Whistleblower Aid, said the lawyer, referring to Peiter Zatko, a former head of security who submitted a whistleblower disclosure to federal agencies in July alleging system weaknesses that made the platform vulnerable to breaches.
Privacy certifications
The company has been under an FTC consent decree since 2011 for making personal information available to advertisers without users’ consent. As part of the settlement, it agreed to let the FTC know about product changes before they go live and certify that they meet privacy standards.
The lawyer’s concern centers on internal expectations under Musk to have product changes complete within two weeks, a period that’s likely too short for company lawyers or executives to review the changes and sign off that they meet privacy requirements under the consent order.
“Legal will ‘have to shift the burden to engineers’ to self-certify compliance with FTC requirements and other laws,” said the lawyer, referencing another lawyer’s comment. “This will put a huge amount of personal, professional and legal risk onto engineers.”
Complicating privacy compliance are the reported resignations of the company’s chief privacy officer, Damien Kieran and other executives involved in privacy matters according to The Verge, including Lea Kissner, the chief information security officer, and Marianne Fogarty, the chief compliance officer.
Quick turnaround
One of the first products Musk wanted to see changed quickly is a subscription service called Twitter Blue. In an effort to ramp up revenue opportunities, Musk has said he wants the product to include premium features along with the existing verified user checkmark in exchange for an $8 fee (although the fee reportedly might not last). The checkmark, for celebrities, politicians and journalists to distinguish themselves from impersonators, used to be free.
The change, which took effect with some limitations last week, has already led to high-profile incidents, including the launch of verified parody accounts of some high-profile people.
“Celebrity impersonators are having a field day,” The Guardian reported. “The blue check … once indicated an account genuinely belonged to a public figure [but now people can get] an account that purports to belong to a celebrity and looks very real.”
In some of the parody accounts, a user impersonating Los Angeles Lakers star Lebron James said he was requesting a trade to a different team and a fake Elon Musk said he was offering people to join him for free nightly dinners if they can show their last name is Grimes, the same name as an ex-girlfriend.
Fewer engineers
Deep staffing cuts throughout the company, but particularly in engineering, can’t be helping with product changes. In one big cut, 80% of the engineers that work in Redbird, the company’s infrastructure team, were cut, raising internal concerns about the company’s ability to keep its site up and running, according to a New York Times report.
The company has since tried to hire back some laid-off engineers, but now it’s competing with other companies.
“Tech recruiters sensed opportunity,” the Times reported. “Top managers at rival companies such as Meta and Google sent messages to some of the employees being let go from Twitter.”
Twitter’s revenue-generating Goldbird team is another example of how cuts have hobbled the company. According to the Times, the company had to bring back employees who ran key money-generating products that “no one else knows how to operate” to keep products operational, the Times said.
By some estimates, something close to half the company’s workforce was let go within the first two weeks of Musk‘s ownership, making it the target of legal action over the insufficient notice it gave employees.
One lawsuit was filed alleging violation of the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, which requires employers to provide written notice at least 60 calendar days in advance of mass layoffs, which couldn’t have happened in Twitter’s case with the layoffs happening inside of two weeks.
Money woes
Musk has said drastic steps are necessary because the company is hemorrhaging money and could be facing bankruptcy if it doesn’t turn things around.
“Elon Musk just told Twitter employees he’s not sure how much run rate the company has and ‘bankruptcy isn’t out of the question,’” Zoë Schiffer, managing editor of Platformer News, a trade publication, said in a tweet.
Separate from Twitter’s financial troubles, the FTC has said it’s keeping an eye on the company’s compliance with its consent decree; if it’s rolling out product changes without letting the agency know about them and certifying to privacy requirements without being sure they’ve met them, it could be opening itself to enforcement action.
According to The Verge, in a statement the FTC released after the publication reported on the Twitter attorney’s internal post, the agency said it’s monitoring the company’s compliance.
“No CEO or company is above the law, and companies must follow our consent decrees,” the FTC statement said. “Our revised consent order gives us new tools to ensure compliance, and we are prepared to use them.”
In an email to employees, Musk said reports that the company isn’t following the consent decree are false, The Verge reported.
“I cannot emphasize enough that Twitter will do whatever it takes to adhere to both the letter and spirit of the FTC consent decree,” Musk said.
