As key executives continue to leave the company, Elon Musk has warned the Twitter team that the business would not survive if it cannot discover new revenue streams.
A US privacy regulator has cautioned Twitter’s new owner that he is not “above the law” as the firm loses high-level executives in charge of data protection, cybersecurity, and regulatory compliance.
Among them is Yoel Roth, who served as the director of trust and safety at Twitter and was in charge of the company’s effort to stop hate speech. On a company bulletin board that reporters were able to access, a manager announced Roth’s resignation to coworkers.
On Thursday morning local time, Mr. Musk gave the order for employees to report back to work. He then called his first “all-hands” meeting for that afternoon.
There is no way to sugar-coat the information, he wrote, “sorry that this is my first email to the entire organization.”
“We need subscriptions to make up around half of our revenue.”
According to a witness who spoke under the condition of anonymity, Mr. Musk said at the meeting that some “exceptional” employees could be exempt from the return-to-work order but that others who did not agree with could quit.
Additionally, the employee claimed that the Tesla billionaire seemed to allay staff concerns about how a smaller Twitter team would uphold privacy and data security requirements by retorting that he knew how it operated as CEO of Tesla.
The memo and staff meeting echoed a live-streamed speech Mr. Musk gave the day before, in which he reassured advertisers that his erratic takeover would not harm their brands after a number of businesses paused their platform advertising.
Rough launch of new blue checks
According to Mr. Musk, creating and launching Twitter’s new $US7.99 ($12) monthly subscription, which includes the blue check mark that was previously exclusively available to verified accounts, was the “priority over the past 10 days.”
The project’s debut has been bumpy this week due to a flood of phony accounts pretending to be well-known individuals, such as basketball player LeBron James and the pharmaceutical business Eli Lilly.
The “absolute top priority” over the next few days, according to Mr. Musk’s second email to the company’s staff, is to suspend “bots/trolls/spam” that take advantage of verified accounts.
However, Twitter currently has much fewer employees to assist him in doing that.
Last week, a company executive said that Twitter was laying off roughly half of its 7,500 employees.
Remote work is no longer permitted, the path ahead is “arduous and will demand intensive work to succeed,” and employees must be in the office for at least 40 hours per week, Mr. Musk informed his staff in an email.
Damien Kieran, the organization’s chief privacy officer, and Lea Kissner, its top information security officer, are among those leaving Twitter. Kissner wrote on Thursday, “I’ve made the hard decision to quit Twitter.”
For Twitter’s dependability and integrity, Roth’s resignation is a “huge loss,” according to Emily Horne, a former coworker, and friend.
Ms. Horne, who until 2018 oversaw global policy communications at Twitter, said, “He’s worked really hard under very trying conditions, including being personally targeted by some of the vilest trolls who were active on the platform.”
Former Facebook security chief and cybersecurity specialist Alex Stamos tweeted on Thursday, that there is a “serious danger of a breach with a dramatically decreased workforce,” which would conflict with a 2011 Federal Trade Commission (FTC) order requiring Twitter to respond to serious data security failures.
Twitter made significant progress toward a more logical internal security model, and reversing course would get them into problems with the FTC and other US and European regulators, according to Mr. Stamos.
According to the FTC, recent developments at Twitter are being “tracked with grave concern.”
The agency declared in a statement that “no CEO or firm is above the law, and companies must abide by our consent decrees.”
We are prepared to use the new tools that our revised consent order gives us to ensure compliance.
The FTC refused to confirm if it was looking into Twitter for possible infractions.
If so, it would have the authority to summon documents and remove employees.
Mr. Musk stated, “Twitter will do whatever it takes to adhere to both the letter and spirit of the FTC consent decree,” in an email to staff that was obtained by the reporters.
Any information you may have read to the contrary is completely wrong. The same is true for any other government regulations that apply to Twitter.
Serious consequences can result from failing to comply with FTC regulations, as was the case when Facebook was forced to pay $US5 billion for privacy violations.
Riana Pfefferkorn, a Stanford University researcher who claimed to have previously offered Twitter outside legal counsel, tweeted that Twitter must conduct a privacy review before it even sneezes.
The FTC can keep track of compliance because there are routine external audits.
