The US government has called for Elon Musk, the owner of X, to testify in a federal investigation into the troubled social media platform previously known as Twitter.
The proposed testimony will primarily focus on mass layoffs as well as organisational and product changes made under Musk’s management, according to a court filing by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) on behalf of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The regulator has called into question X’s potential to comply with state laws on user privacy and online safety following the chaos that has gripped the popular platform since Musk’s $44 billion takeover.
The call for testimony is a major development in a continuing probe into X by the US government. The court filing relies significantly on testimonies from various former X executives, including the company’s former chief information security officer and chief privacy officer. Their revelations that the unprecedented layoffs and resignations under Musk’s management may have demonstrated an adverse impact on the company’s compliance with security regulations under an FTC consent agreement (enforced in 2011) have intensified the investigation.
The filing cites claims made by former employees regarding the deficiency in staffing, which subsequently left the platform’s security programme in a critical state without any adequate oversight and management. The documents also point out flaws in the upgrades to the very security programme. The claims cited in the court filing mirror the explosive reports that emerged in November last year about concerning episodes of mass layoffs and employees departing X in droves, which at one point led to widespread speculation that the tweeting platform might collapse.
X has since suffered several global outages, which digital safety and tech industry experts ascribed to the lack of experienced professionals. The company witnessed a stream of resignations particularly after Musk demanded employees to be “extremely hardcore” and commitment to long work hours. A large number of workers refused to be part of the rigorous cultural reset, accusing the billionaire of exploiting the remaining workforce and raising objections to his taxing demands “to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0”. The resignations also came from engineers who were in charge of preventing service disruptions, leaving the platform vulnerable to outages.
The filing also brings to scrutiny the controversial product changes made by Musk in order to make X profitable, including the Twitter Blue subscription service that monetised blue checkmarks for verification. The service was rolled back shortly after its launch when imposter accounts flooded then Twitter and caused some businesses losses worth millions of dollars. It was relaunched following some revisions, but the damages already suffered by business firms compelled various advertisers to opt out of X. The research conducted by academic institutions and nonprofits following Musk’s reinstatement of previously banned accounts also indicated a “dramatic” rise in hate speech targeting users on the basis of their identity, race and religion.
Some of the recent controversial changes planned under Musk’s management of X include the suspension of its blocking feature — which is widely used to prevent harassment, bullying and stalking — and allowing back political advertising, which was banned in 2019 after digital safety experts and critics raised concerns about the rise in election misinformation, coordinated disinformation campaigns executed on social media platforms and the lack of robust mechanisms to counter them effectively.
