Whistleblower Discloses Serious Problems Within Twitter
Have you noticed that news tends to make certain social media platforms more visible for the right or wrong reasons. It has circulated for the past few days that Twitter is in trouble. As reported by the Columbia Journalism review (CJR), confirmed senior executives at Twitter and CEO of Twitter, Parag Agrawal, misled intentional federal regulators about the company’s operations.
The news of this comes after the Washington Post and CNN published news reports about the whistleblower’s allegations about what is really happening on the ground with Twitter. The allegations have been disclosed by former Head of Security at Twitter, Peter Zatko.
Within the complaint reported by the Post by Zatko said Twitter is a company that is chaotic and rudderless beset by infighting. In other words, it is unable to protect the information from its 238 million daily users. As part of these millions of accounts it includes unable to safeguard accounts associated with government agencies, heads of state, and other public figures.
It turns out Twitter had run into issues with high profile and verified accounts. For example, Jack Dorsey’s account was accidentally suspended back in 2016. In addition, former President Donald Trump also had his account disabled by a contractor in 2017.
Back in May, I had written about the Twitter acquisition put on hold because Elon Musk wanted more information on the number of spam or bot accounts. Consequently Zatko revealed that Twitter does not properly count spam or bots. Consequently, it does not monitor the situation with fake accounts and foreign agents have accessed Twitter’s data, which is a national security concern.
In the next section, I will shed some light on why I wrote this and why from a media perspective it is problematic when it comes to U.S user data.
All Social Media App Should Be Subject To Strict Privacy Data Laws
When I read this from an email coming from the CJR it was the first time a U.S-based social media platform was seriously accused of misrepresenting its data practices. I have written before about the media’s tendency to make TikTok the ultimate and usual suspect around violations of any kind. However, this Twitter situation is serious because it has been around much longer than TikTok.
I understand TikTok is a Chinese-based app and outperformed all existing platforms from the United States. No easy feat if you ask me and not surprising since most of us went to TikTok to get away from the polarization of politics on Twitter.
Given the fact these companies are mishandling user data from kids to adults, why can a new law be passed or enacted to regulate privacy? It comes down to politics and control. Nowadays, have data from users is much more important than a barrel of oil. It shapes elections and democracies.
Do we want user data and its manipulation of it lead to more problems? We are already here and it demands bold action from voters to pressure elected officials to stop playing party politics and the blame game.
Passing a comprehensive measure is totally fair, but I am here to balance out the narrative around what can be done to protect out privacy.
