Elon Musk guarantees a deal next Monday buy Twitter for about $44 billion and take the company private. In his original comment About the move, Musk discussed a range of goals from “making algorithms open source for increased reliability” to tackling spambots and “authenticating all humans.” There’s no word yet on how Musk will run Twitter, but privacy and security advocates say these early comments paint a mixed picture of where the social media giants may come to the fore under its new leadership — and disclose the risks of trusted platforms to protect our personal information.
Unlike Facebook and other platforms that have enforced a “real name” policy, Twitter largely allows people to use pseudonyms or remain anonymous, an approach that could change under Musk. Additionally, Musk will soon be able to access all Twitter user data, including IP addresses and the content of direct messages. Twitter’s DMs notably don’t end-to-end encryption, meaning anyone who controls the platform can access them. Advocates of end-to-end encryption have long emphasized that protection not only protects users’ data from prying eyes, but provides lasting power to users, no matter who they are. own service when.
“Elon Musk is truly the king of Twitter right now. There’s nothing stopping him from accessing your direct messages or handing them over to a government—perhaps one of the countries Tesla is trying to do business in,” said Evan Greer, deputy director of the rights group Digital Fight for the Future said. For example, the Chinese government is famous for control both public discourse and private communications, which requires tech companies to keep records of their users’ identities even when people are allowed to post using the handle. Is a rival of billionaire Jeff Bezos highlighted in a tweet on Monday, one of Musk’s other companies, Tesla, has major business interests in China. Twitter, meanwhile, still a thorn in the side of Beijing.
Like other tech giants, Twitter has spent years building systems for Report things like the amount of government-requested information it received or legal requirements to remove content. Musk has indicated that transparency will be his priority at Twitter, but remains unclear what areas he wants to focus on and his stance on issues like government requests for user data.
In general, digital rights advocates point out that open standards protect speech more effectively than closed ecosystems, because they allow multiple organizations to offer interoperable versions of a service. that can be selected by the user. (Think of SMS and email as two examples of these types of services.) In practice, however, users have flocked to the relative simplicity and ease of use that platforms like Twitter offer. In recent years, the company has even launched its own discovery program, Blue Sky Projectto look at ways to open Twitter as a standardized, interoperable platform rather than a single, self-contained service.
When Musk talks about “authenticating all humans,” he’s probably referring to a plan to reduce spambots by requiring users to fill in a captcha before tweeting to prove they’re human. People. It’s not yet clear how feasible a system like this is, but in theory, privacy and security advocates say it’s a best-case scenario and could actually be useful. The worst case scenario, however, is that Musk is advocating a situation in which Twitter would collect information about each user to internally confirm that they are an individual, or worse, require the user to only have an account. Twitter under their legal identity. .
