Twitter whistleblower claims Musk was right about bots; FTC reviewing report
Enlarge (credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg)
The pressure on Twitter to talk publicly about how it monitors and removes spam accounts continues to mount.
Reports from CNN and The Washington Post reveal an 84-page whistleblower complaint alleging that Twitter isn't motivated to track the true number of spam accounts and hid security vulnerabilities from federal regulators.
The complaint comes from Twitter's former security chief, Peiter Zatko. Zatko is a well-known ethical hacker with the alias Mudge." He told the Post that he felt ethically bound" to report his serious concerns to government agencies. He alleges that he was fired for pushing disinclined Twitter executives to address major security problems-which his complaint suggests pose a threat" to Twitter users' personal information, to company shareholders, to national security, and to democracy."