Elon Musk has officially dodged a bullet with the FTC. It concluded that while Musk’s orders to give journalists access to Twitter’s internal systems for use in the Twitter Files fiasco did violate a 2011 FTC order to properly safeguard user data, employees from the company stepped in to prevent any violations from actually taking place. Thus, Musk is off the hook, at least for now. The investigation, which started in 2022, revolved around Musk’s order for employees to grant third-party individuals “broad access” to the company’s systems with “no limits at all.” Around that time, several journalists—Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Lee Fang, and authors Michael Shellenberger, David Zweig and Alex Berenson—said they received unfiltered access to Twitter’s system. Weiss even claimed to have a company laptop. “When we heard credible public reports of potential violations of protections for Twitter users’ data, we moved swiftly to investigate,” FTC spokesman Douglas Farrar said in a statement to the Washington Post. “The order remains in place and the FTC continues to deploy the order’s tools to protect Twitter users’ data and ensure the company remains in compliance.”As per FTC Chair Lina M. Khan, Musk’s orders to allow writers to access all of Twitter did violate the original consent decree. However, after deposing several Twitter employees, the FTC concluded that the “unfiltered access” was an overstatement. In reality, the writers were in touch with Twitter employees who were accessing data on their behalf.”Through the company’s responses and depositions of former Twitter employees, FTC staff learned that the access provided to the third-party individuals turned out to be more limited than the individuals’ tweets and other public reporting had indicated,” Khan says. “Ultimately the third-party individuals did not receive direct access to Twitter’s systems, but instead worked with other company employees who accessed the systems on the individuals’ behalf.”
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The letter also defends the FTC’s actions in starting an investigation, citing Musk’s mass layoffs that included several top security personnel and the rushed rollout of Twitter Blue that resulted in hundreds of accounts that impersonated celebrities. Khan also writes that Musk has broken the 2011 order once before, which resulted in changes to the order and a $150 million fine for Musk.Thus, while the FTC is not charging Musk for giving access to journalists, Khan says that they’ll keep an eye on him to ensure that the 2011 order continues to be followed.
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