1669002788095275

Twitter violated privacy promises by using consumers' phone numbers and emails for targeted ads, despite claiming it was for multi-factor authentication. They were charged a $150 million penalty for violating a 2011 FTC order. Elon Musk's recent ownership of Twitter led to layoffs and top executives resigning without a compliance notice, causing legal concerns. Users' rights to know how their personal information is used were violated. Musk should be given some leeway, but Twitter should be closely monitored to prevent future violations. They should be punished to prevent repeating legal problems. Hello, my name is Nolan Williams, and the topic that I will be discussing today is Twitter and how it broke the privacy promises the company made to customers about the use of their private information. To start, they violated the 2011 Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, order, which was a warning to them from years ago. First off, Twitter is a very popular social media platform that is used by people of various likes and interests. Twitter used consumers' phone numbers and emails by benefiting by letting advertisers have access to it. By allowing advertisers to access this information, Twitter benefited from it since the ads that were being shown to the users were target ads that correspond with what each user enjoys. Twitter informed their customers that their phone numbers would be used for multi-factor authentication to better secure their accounts. Multi-factor authentication is just another way for users to secure their information with an additional form of identification. Instead, Twitter lied and made millions of dollars from targeted ads. This whole problem started in 2010 when the Federal Trade Commission complained to Twitter about them not having enough safeguards to make sure the users' privacy requests were fulfilled. The case was then settled in 2011, and the outcome was that Twitter would face large financial penalties if the company was found not protecting users' security and privacy from the 2011 Federal Trade Commission order. Twitter did find a new way of using customers' information, which started in 2013 and went through 2019 in September. During this time, more than 140 million Twitter users gave their phone numbers and email addresses in hopes of a more secure account. So after years of violating users' privacy, Twitter was charged with a $150 million penalty for violating the 2011 Federal Trade Commission order. After this was all settled, Twitter agreed to new provisions to prevent this in the future. One provision that was important was that Twitter had to tell their users about how they misused their personal information, like phone numbers and email addresses, and about how the Federal Trade Commission enforced action upon this problem. Just recently, big news spread around about Elon Musk being the new owner of Twitter. Once again, Twitter is being investigated for violating its consent agreement with the Federal Trade Commission. The consent order implies that Twitter must submit a notice within 14 days of any change in the company. Elon Musk became the owner of Twitter on October 27, 2022, and after being with Twitter for about two weeks, Musk started to lay off many employees, along with many of Twitter's top executives resigning from the company. Two of the people who left were Twitter's chief privacy officer and Twitter's chief information security officer. These two positions are responsible for being involved with Twitter's compliance reports, which could not be done as fast since they left the company. Okay, now let's look at each side of this debate. First, the Twitter users that gave their information to Twitter are the stakeholders in this debate. The issue that the stakeholders were presented with is their right to know what their personal information is being used and profited for. They were lied to by Twitter just so the company can make money off of advertisements. Most of the revenue that Twitter brings in comes from advertisements every year, so by doing this, they were basically toying with their users in order to make multi-millions of dollars. Also, Twitter employees are stakeholders in the recent event of their new owner, Elon Musk. He laid off employees along with top executives leaving, but before changes like this, Twitter is responsible to make a 14-day compliance notice about what they are doing, but Elon Musk and Twitter did not send a notice resulting in legal concerns from the FTC once again on their company. On the opposing side of the case, Elon Musk's view is important. Some background information about Elon Musk is that he is no rookie to the business world whatsoever. Being the richest man on the planet has showed all the hard work he puts into the companies he is involved with. Before he bought Twitter, Musk has been involved with many big companies like SpaceX, Tesla, and Neuralink. Musk recently bought the company for a huge price of $44 billion. One argument that would be for Musk would be that the executives are responsible for creating the compliance notice, but they left the company, so Musk should be given some time to at least find new positions so that they can be filled and the notice can be completed. Now, aside from the facts, I personally have a take on what I believe is right during this investigation. I believe that Twitter should have been fined more since it is a billion-dollar company. Aside from that, the ethical issue I have with this is that the user's information was falsely used by Twitter to promote ads that targeted specific interests of people. I do believe Twitter should have been fined at least $500 million, or to put it in perspective, a half a billion dollars, since it was purchased for $44 billion by Elon and it was their second time violating rules against the Federal Trade Commission. On top of this, I believe some leeway should be given to Elon Musk. I say this because the executives who created the compliance notice resigned, so it would have been very hard to send in a 14-day notice about what Elon Musk was attempting to do. But Elon Musk is the owner, and he should know his rights and responsibilities of being an owner of a billion-dollar company when making decisions, especially when they involve job loss and resignment. I believe Twitter should be closely monitored for a couple more months just to make sure that they do not break any more Federal Trade Commission orders, especially when there is a new owner who already caused legal concerns after two weeks. I believe if Musk is caught doing something like this again, he should have major fines from years of user information being used and from Twitter having a bad reputation with the Federal Trade Commission. So, after all of this, Twitter should be punished for their repeating legal problems with the Federal Trade Commission so that these problems do not repeat themselves again.