Things Sure Don't Seem To Be Going Well At Twitter | HuffPost Latest News

Welcome to the new Twitter . Here, everyone can be anyone and for the low, low price of $8, the company will give you a veneer of legitimacy to back it up at least temporarily.

Nearly two weeks into the companys Elon Musk era, half of the employees have been laid off (prompting a class action lawsuit ), large advertisers have paused their spending (leading to a dire financial situation), and Twitters previous system for verifying that people are who they claim to be has been deliberately demolished.

That means anyone can now set up an account pretending to be anyone else, and pay $8 for the checkmark that used to signify the account had been verified, but now means nothing.

Thats how George W. Bush on Thursday came to tweet, I miss killing Iraqis only for Tony Blair to respond, Same tbh.

That sound?

Advertisers quietly seeing themselves out the door.... pic.twitter.com/PHijXj19uF

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That sound?

Advertisers quietly seeing themselves out the door.... pic.twitter.com/PHijXj19uF
John Scott-Railton (@jsrailton) November 10, 2022

The accounts, both fake, were eventually suspended but only after they gained widespread attention and more than nine hours after their initial tweets. Its what advertisers might consider a free-for-all hellscape .

Join us for a brief recap of whats happening at Twitter:

Playing chicken with the FTC

Twitters chief privacy officer Damien Kieran, chief information security officer Lea Kissner, and chief compliance officer Marianne Fogarty all resigned this week , according to Platformer reporter Casey Newton.

In their absence, engineers will reportedly be expected to self-certify compliance with [Federal Trade Commission] requirements and other laws.

Kissner confirmed their departure on Twitter Thursday.

I've made the hard decision to leave Twitter. I've had the opportunity to work with amazing people and I'm so proud of the privacy, security, and IT teams and the work we've done.

I'm looking forward to figuring out what's next, starting with my reviews for @USENIXSecurity

Lea Kissner (@LeaKissner) November 10, 2022","type":"rich","meta":{"author":"Lea Kissner","author_url":"https://twitter.com/LeaKissner","cache_age":86400,"description":"I've made the hard decision to leave Twitter. 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I've made the hard decision to leave Twitter. I've had the opportunity to work with amazing people and I'm so proud of the privacy, security, and IT teams and the work we've done.

I'm looking forward to figuring out what's next, starting with my reviews for @USENIXSecurity
Lea Kissner (@LeaKissner) November 10, 2022

The departures expose Twitter, and individual employees, to potentially billions of dollars in legal liability, stemming in particular from an agreement the company reached with the FTC in May for misusing private user data to serve ads.

In a note obtained by The Verge , a lawyer on the companys privacy team sounded the alarm internally and encouraged employees to seek whistleblower protection if theyre asked to do anything theyre uncomfortable with.

Over the last two weeks, Elon has shown that he cares only about recouping the losses hes incurring as a result of failing to get out of his binding obligation to buy Twitter, the letter reads, in part. He chose to enter into that agreement! All of us are being put through this as a result of choices he made.

I have heard Alex Spiro (current head of legal) say that Elon is willing to take on huge amount of risk in relation to this company and its users, the author wrote , because Elon puts rockets into space, hes not afraid of the FTC.

Separately Thursday, Yoel Roth, Twitters head of Trust & Safety and a leading figure in the fight against hate speech on the platform, was also said to be leaving the company.