In addition to the well-known “Elon Have To Buy Twitter For $44B” drama, Twitter is currently embroiled in a new controversy that appears to have greater ability to actively harm the company’s brand. The former security chief of Twitter, Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, who was let go in January, has made a variety of claims, including lying about the amount of bots on the site, deceiving federal authorities, and using subpar security procedures.
The Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) received a 200-page comprehensive complaint from Zatko last month alleging that Twitter had engaged in numerous illegal activities, including misleading its shareholders and flagrantly violating the agreement between Twitter and the FTC (Federal Trade Commission).
The complaint involved other detailed claims like, Twitter does not delete the user’s information after they delete their accounts, Twitter never had or tried to know the actual number of bots on the platform let alone putting efforts into removing bots from Twitter(which has recently become the pinpoint of Elon to get out of the deal)
Zatko was hired by Twitter back in 2020 under the regime of the previous CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey when Twitter went through a major hack attack and the security of some of the biggest accounts on Twitter was affected. In an interview with The Washington Post, Zatok said that Jack was a good CEO and wanted to improve the security and sacracy of a critical platform of the world and Zatok had the same vision. But Twitter changed once and for all when Parag Agarwal was appointed as CEO and everything about Twitter went to the gutter.
“This would never be my first step, but I believe I am still fulfilling my obligation to Jack and to users of the platform,” Zatko told The Washington Post. “I want to finish the job Jack brought me in for, which is to improve the place.”
Obviously, Twitter tried to deflect the allegations back to Zatok and they decided to target the credibility of the whistleblower in an interview with the CNN, Twitter’s spokesperson said;
“Mr. Zatko has fired from his senior executive role at Twitter for poor performance and ineffective leadership over six months ago. While we haven’t had access to the specific allegations being referenced, what we’ve seen so far is a narrative about our privacy and data security practices that are riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies, and lacks important context.”
The spokesperson also indicated that these allegations are a big conspiracy by some reval party and were probably talking about Tesla’s CEO.
“Mr. Zatko’s allegations and opportunistic timing appear designed to capture attention and inflict harm on Twitter, its customers and its shareholders. Security and privacy have long been company-wide priorities at Twitter and we still have a lot of work ahead of us.”
On the other hand, Elon and the company have been vocal about the matters and on record said that they will use the whistleblower for the case. Whether it was planned or not, one thing is for sure all this will prove to be a great help for Elon’s case.
“We have already issued a subpoena for Mr. Zatko,” Alex Spiro, a lawyer representing Musk, said, “and we found his exit and that of other key employees curious in light of what we have been finding.”
Even if Elon’s lawyer would be unable to get a proveable statement from Zatko before the SEC moves forward with the matters, the public perception can be changed from “Elon backed on his word” to “Twitter is the biggest liar of the century”.
