Have you noticed that news tends to make certain social media platforms more visible for the right or wrong reasons. In recent days it has been circulating that Twitter is in trouble. As reported by the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), senior Twitter executives and Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal confirmed that they intentionally misled federal regulators about the company’s operations.
The news comes after the Washington Post and CNN published reports about whistleblower claims about what’s really going on on the ground with Twitter. The allegations were made public by Twitter’s former head of security, Peter Zatko.
In the complaint reported by the Post, Zatko said Twitter is a chaotic and rudderless company beset by infighting. In other words, it is unable to protect information from its 238 million daily users. As part of these millions of accounts, it includes the inability to protect accounts associated with government agencies, heads of state and other public figures.
It turns out that Twitter had run into problems with high-profile, verified accounts. For example, Jack Dorsey’s account was accidentally suspended in 2016. Additionally, former President Donald Trump also had his account disabled by a contractor in 2017.
In May, I wrote about the Twitter acquisition being put on hold because Elon Musk wanted more information on the number of spam or bot accounts. Consequently, Zatko discovered that Twitter does not properly count spam or bots. Consequently, it does not monitor the situation with fake accounts and foreign agents having access to Twitter data, which is a national security concern.
In the next section, I’ll shed some light on why I wrote this and why from a media perspective it’s problematic when it comes to US user data.
When I read this from an email coming from CJR, it was the first time a US-based social media platform was seriously accused of misrepresenting its data practices. I’ve written before about the media’s tendency to make TikTok the ultimate and usual suspect in violations of any kind. However, this situation on Twitter is serious because it has been around much longer than TikTok.
I understand that TikTok is a China-based app and has surpassed all existing platforms from the United States. It’s not easy if you ask me and it’s not surprising since most of us took to TikTok to get away from the polarizing politics on Twitter.
Given the fact that these companies are misusing the data of users from children to adults, why would a new law be passed or enacted to regulate privacy? It’s about politics and control. Nowadays, user data is much more important than a barrel of oil. It shapes elections and democracies.
Do we want user data and its manipulation to lead to more problems? We’re already here, and it takes bold action by voters to pressure elected officials to stop playing partisan politics and the blame game.
Passing a sweeping measure is completely right, but I’m here to balance the narrative about what can be done to protect privacy.
