Musk’s X poses “serious risk to Americans’ privacy,” advocates warn FTC

What happened

“X Corp.’s foray into artificial intelligence development should prompt greater FTC oversight of the company’s privacy practices, not less,” advocates said.

X did not respond to Ars’ request to comment.

However, former US Attorney General William Barr has submitted comments supporting X. In his letter, Barr called out hundreds of FTC info demands after Musk bought Twitter as excessive.

More glaringly, advocates pointed out that X is largely unchanged, serving the same functions as a platform as Twitter.

Why it matters

Arguing against “permanent agency control of private companies,” Barr pushed the FTC to stop treating the termination of consent orders as requiring extraordinary circumstances, and at the very least reopen the order to consider if the scope of X’s restrictions is proper.

Whether X’s petition can succeed may hinge on X’s legal analysis, though, which advocates claim was “misleading.”

For example, neither of the cases X cited actually supports its claim that a “transformed” company shouldn’t be obligated to maintain an order after restructuring, advocates argued. In one case, an order was terminated by invoking a “sunset” policy that requires such an outcome after 20 years.

In the other, an order was not fundamentally changed due to a market shift, as X argued, but eventually modified after 16 years of compliance.

What to watch

In contrast to those cases, X’s order is “merely four years old,” advocates said, and X has shown it still requires scrutiny. Further, Musk agreed to accept the costs and comply with the order when he bought Twitter, so he should be stuck with it for the entire duration, they argued.

Musk, therefore, remains “in the exact same business of operating a social media platform, still utilizes user data for targeted advertising, and now has new uses and desires for consumer information in its AI business that make the 2022 Order’s oversight even more vital,” advocates said.