CALM DOWN

Musk Lawyer Assures Twitter Staff They Won’t Go to Jail for Any FTC Violations

A Twitter lawyer previously raised fears that the company’s remaining workers could be putting themselves at legal risk.

Elon Musk's lawyer is rushing to assure Twitter’s remaining employees that they will not be held criminally liable if they botch the company’s security guidelines. “I understand that there have been employees at Twitter who do not even work on the FTC matter commenting that they could go to jail if we were not in compliance—that is simply not how this works,” Musk’s attorney told employees, according to Bloomberg. “It is the company’s obligation. It is the company’s burden. It is the company’s liability.” Twitter has been under a consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission since 2011. The decree gave the social media company strict rules on how to handle user data. But with Twitter employees quitting and being fired en masse, and Twitter rolling out a series of baffling new programs, Twitter legal officials have raised concerns that the company’s skeleton crew might make costly mistakes. “I anticipate that all of you will be pressured by management into pushing out changes that will likely lead to major incidents,” a Twitter lawyer warned colleagues in a Slack message earlier this week. “All of this is extremely dangerous for our users. Also, given that the FTC can (and will!) fine Twitter BILLIONS of dollars pursuant to the FTC Consent Order, extremely detrimental to Twitter’s longevity as a platform.”