Twitter lawyer warns Elon Musk could put company at risk with billions of dollars in fines

These two weeks have been quite interesting. Elon has shown that he cares only about recouping the losses he’s incurring as a result of failing to get out of his binding obligation to buy Twitter. He signed that agreement! Because of his choices, we are all going through this.

Elon has made it clear that his priority is to make Twitter users monetize. I don’t believe he is concerned about human rights activists. The dissidents, users from un-monetizable areas, and all other users who have made Twitter the global square that you all have worked so hard to build, which we all love.

I have heard Alex Spiro (current head of Legal) say that Elon is willing to take on a huge amount of risk in relation to this company and its users, because “Elon puts rockets into space, he’s not afraid of the FTC.” I have heard another leader in the Legal department say that because of the tight SLA’s (of two weeks?!) between product inception > launch, Legal will “have to shift the burden to engineers” to self-certify compliance with FTC requirements and other laws. This will expose engineers to huge personal, professional, and legal risks. Management will likely pressure you all to make changes that are likely to cause major incidents.

This is all extremely dangerous for our users. The FTC has the power (and will) to fine Twitter BILLIONS of dollars. fine Twitter BILLIONS of dollars pursuant to the FTC Consent Order, extremely detrimental to Twitter’s longevity as a platform. Our users deserve better than this.

If you feel uncomfortable about anything you’re being asked to do, you can call Twitter’s Ethics Hotline at (800) 275-4843 or submit a report at ethicshelpline.twitter.com. Please also note the FTC’s number is: 1-877-FTC-HELP. You may also remember that Mudge reached out to httos://whistlebloweraid.org

All the best to you. It’s been such an honor to work with all of you. And I’ll be taking a day of PTO today.