Elon Musk’s X Corp. (formerly Twitter) recently filed a petition with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) asking to terminate the 20-year privacy consent order it entered into with the agency in 2022 — 16 years before it is set to expire. The order stemmed from Twitter’s collection of more than 140 million users’ phone numbers and email addresses between 2013 and 2019, which was done under the pretense of account security but then used for targeted advertising. In 2022, Twitter paid a $150 million civil penalty and agreed to establish a comprehensive privacy and information security program.
In its petition, X Corp. argues that all employees responsible for the violations have since left the company, and that it has built a “world-class privacy and data protection program,” making the order “no longer serve any valid regulatory purpose.” The company also claims that terminating the order would uphold First Amendment values and that the compliance burden is critical to “advancing U.S. leadership in artificial intelligence.” However, the move has drawn widespread opposition. FTC Chair Lina Khan previously responded that an investigation revealed Musk had instructed employees to take actions that could have violated the order, but that “long-tenured information security staff” stepped in to implement privacy safeguards. Several state attorneys general have also criticized the FTC for allegedly misusing the order’s authority in investigations unrelated to consumer privacy.