Twitter might not “survive the upcoming economic downturn” warned social network CEO Elon Musk in a group call with employees. The new owner of Twitter said that bankruptcy should not be ruled out if the company fails to boost subscription revenue to mitigate the downturn of ad income.
A report from Reuters says that several key executives including the Chief Information Security Officer and Yoel Roth, the Head of Trust & Safety have left the company, which, among other factors, has left Twitter in disarray.
Roth was responsible for addressing hate speech, misinformation, and spam on Twitter and now his account bio says he is a “Former Head” at the company. According to an internal Slack message, the company’s Chief Privacy Officer and Chief Compliance Officer also left the company. A person familiar with the matter has said that Robin Wheeler is now the top ad executive, at least for now.
After all these drastic changes within the company, The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is now keeping an eye on Twitter with “deep concern”, especially after the top executives left. These exist puts Twitter at risk of receiving several regulatory fines, but Musk’s attorney Alex Spiro says that the current Twitter team is having “an ongoing constructive dialogue” on the matter.
The main reason the FTC is eyeing Twitter is that the social media giant has already misused personal information in the past, such as giving phone numbers to advertisers on the platform. Spiro has made a poor attempt at addressing the situation. He said that “Elon puts rockets into space, and he’s not afraid of the FTC” without clarifying the connection between the two.
