Elon Musk, the new Twitter owner and new CEO, revealed to employees in a mass phone call that social media failure shouldn’t be ruled out. The announcement comes hours after a mass email, in which Musk warns that the company may not “survive the impending economic downturn” if it fails to increase subscription revenue to offset declining advertising revenue.
Reuters reports that the turmoil on Twitter was also fueled by the exit of key executives, including the Chief Information Security Officer and Yoel Roth, the head of Trust & Safety.
Roth was overseeing Twitter’s response to hate speech, misinformation and spam, and now his Twitter account bio reveals he is a “former boss” of the company. The Chief Privacy Officer and Chief Compliance Officer are also gone, according to an internal message from Slack. One person who has decided to stay at least for now is Robin Wheeler, the company’s top advertising executive.
The US Federal Trade Commission is watching Twitter with “deep concern” after privacy and compliance executives left the company. These releases put social media at risk of violating regulatory orders, but Musk’s attorney Alex Spiro revealed that the team is having “a constructive dialogue going on” on the matter.
The reason the FTC is monitoring development on Twitter is that social media has already misused personal information, such as phone numbers provided to advertisers. Spiro, however, tried to calm the situation, saying “Elon puts the rockets into space, he is not afraid of the FTC” without clarifying the link between the two.
Start a new Thread