The Federal Trade Commission, which has become the de-facto enforcer for Silicon Valley shenanigans, has decided the smell coming from Twitter HQ can no longer be ignored after their top privacy and security people have left:
It marked the second time in two days that a federal official has expressed concern about the chaotic developments at the company, coming less than 24 hours after President Biden said Musk’s relationships with other countries deserved scrutiny.
The agency said that it was “tracking the developments at Twitter with deep concern” and that it was prepared to take action to ensure the company was complying with a settlement known as a consent order, which requires Twitter to comply with certain privacy and security requirements because of allegations of past data misuse.
Twitter was first put under a consent order in 2011 and it agreed to a new order earlier this year. If the FTC finds Twitter is not complying with that order, it could fine the company hundreds of millions of dollars, potentially damaging the company’s already precarious financial state.
The FTC is the only government agency that could act through its consent decrees as a check on Musk, whose first two weeks at the helm of Twitter have been chaotic. The federal government has only limited oversight of social media companies, but the FTC has used its oversight of consumer protection and competition to establish itself as the country’s top data privacy regulator. The agency has used consent orders to hold some of the country’s largest tech companies, including Google, Facebook, and Snap, accountable for alleged privacy missteps. In 2019, the agency reached a $5 billion settlement with Facebook for its alleged violation of a prior order.
I wondered if there were a deadpool on Twitter...