- The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) under Joe Biden's administration continues to harass Elon Musk's company. This time, Twitter has been asked to hand over records requiring Twitter to "identify all journalists" who use the platform as the government continues to dig deeper into the private data of American citizens.
- At least 12 separate letters have been sent by the FTC to Twitter since Elon Musk officially took over Twitter on October 27 of last year.
- These bombardments of requests are part of what the government is framing as an attempt to see which journalists were given secret access to Twitter's data while Twitter was controlled by different owners.
- The government also reportedly wants to know why Twitter fired so many employees before Elon Musk took control of the company and what guided those firings. They also want to know what drove Elon Musk to create a "Twitter Blue" subscription program.
Why This Matters
- It's long been speculated that Twitter's censorship decisions after the 2020 presidential election may have been driven by far more than content moderation policies. Elon Musk has confirmed this through a release of the "Twitter Files" that he has released to the public.
- The timing of these records requests is suspicious, to say the least. The government never seemed too interested in the platform until Elon Musk took it over last year and reinstated conservatives whose accounts had been banned by the previous owners.
- Regardless of what federal investigators find, it's probably safe to say that Twitter is in far better hands than it was 2 years ago.
