In view of the chaos surrounding the verification tick on Twitter, the American consumer protection agency is alarmed. The company had actually guaranteed data security for new functions. Responsible top managers are now taking their hats off.
After being taken over by Elon Musk and the chaos surrounding fake accounts with verification ticks, Twitter received a sharp warning from the US consumer protection agency FTC. “We are following the recent developments on Twitter with great concern,” said an FTC spokesman. No company or its boss is above the law.
On Wednesday, Twitter implemented the reorganization of the allocation of verification ticks announced by Musk. So far, they have been granted by Twitter to celebrities, politicians and companies after an examination. Under the new system, anyone who pays $8 a month for a subscription gets the tick. There is no identity check. The tick looks the same in both cases. You can only find out from the text after clicking on the symbol whether you are dealing with an earlier, actually verified account or with a newly purchased tick.
Some users made use of the new function to create deceptively real-looking fake accounts: For example, from basketball star LeBron James, the games company Nintendo and ex-US President Donald Trump. The pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly apologized to Twitter users who were led to believe by a fake account that insulin would be distributed free of charge in the future.
Following previous violations at the FTC, Twitter had undertaken, among other things, to subject new functions to a data protection and security test before they were introduced. According to media reports, Musk assured employees in an email after the FTC warning that Twitter would do everything possible to comply with the agreement with the agency. Violations of the agreement can result in fines in the millions.
Several high-ranking employees have since left the company. Security chief Lea Kissner and Damien Kieran, who is responsible for data protection, announced their departure on Thursday. US media also reported that more managers had left Twitter.
Last week, Twitter laid off around half of its 7,500 employees. Musk had already fired Twitter management immediately after taking over the company. For the first time since the layoffs, Musk addressed the remaining employees. He challenged her to help Twitter reach one billion users.
He also said that Twitter is losing a lot of money. “It is possible that we will have a liquidity deficit of several billion,” he wrote in messages, warning of a possible bankruptcy. “You may have noticed that I sold a number of Tesla shares. The reason I did this is to save Twitter,” Musk told employees. The path becomes tedious, and the employees also have to be “in the office at least 40 hours a week”.
