Whistle Blown
News on the upcoming Twitter v Musk trial has been nonexistent in the last few weeks, as both sides are compiling evidence for the important dates in October. Fortunately for Musk’s team, the biggest evidence possible might have been released on Tuesday with a whistleblower report that shocked everyone. Twitter’s former Head of Security, Peiter Zatko, filed a whistleblower complaint against his former employer, claiming that there were multiple deficiencies in the business, including privacy, security and moderation, among others. This marks the second major whistleblower complaint against a major social media company following Frances Haugen’s filing against Facebook. Zatko claims that Twitter misused consumer data, violating privacy rules and what could get them in big trouble. There are certain regulations that limit the amount of employees who have access to that data, and he says that twitter has completely violated this.
The major news, however, comes with Zatko comments on bot accounts. He said that Twitter miscounts the amount of users by focusing on ones that they can monetize instead of the active daily count, which adds an interesting fold. Musk alleged that Twitter was being misleading with their user count and bot data, and Zatko’s complaint says the same exact thing, providing concrete evidence to the judge that Musk’s right in his actions. His legal team has already issued a subpoena for Zatko, and what seemed like an exciting trial just became extremely one-sided if these allegations prove to be true. Twitter also faces trouble from the government as investigations will begin from the SEC and FTC among others, and lawmakers now have their eyes on the company due to privacy violations. Twitter will likely lose some buzz with consumers too, like what happened with Meta, and the only direction they’re going is down in the near future.
I am not a financial advisor and my comments should never be taken as financial advice. Investments come with risk, so always do your research and analysis beforehand.
