Elon Musk’s Twitter Buy Exposes a Privacy Minefield
Elon Musk Secured an agreement on Monday to buy Twitter for about $44 billion and take the company private. In his initial comments about the move, Musk discussed a range of goals from “making the algorithms open source to increase trust” to addressing spambots and “authenticating all humans.” There isn't more information available yet on how Musk will steer Twitter, but privacy and security proponents say that these initial comments paint a mixed picture of where the social media giant could be headed under its new leadership—and reveal the risks of trusting platforms to protect our private information.
Unlike Facebook and other platforms that have enforced “real name” policies, Twitter has largely allowed 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 are notably not end-to-end encrypted, meaning that they can be accessed by whoever controls the platform. Proponents of end-to-end encryption have long emphasized that the protection not only safeguards users' data from prying eyes of all sorts, but puts the power with users for the long term, regardless of who owns the service when.
“Elon Musk is now literally the king of Twitter. There is nothing stopping him from accessing your direct messages or handing them over to a government—perhaps one in a country where Tesla is trying to do business,” says Evan Greer, deputy director of the digital rights group Fight for the Future. The Chinese government, for example, is notorious for policing both public discourse and private communications, demanding that tech companies retain records about the identities of their users even if people are allowed to post using a handle. As rival ultra-billionaire Jeff Bezos highlighted in a Monday tweet thread, one of Musk's other companies, Tesla, has major business interests in China. Twitter, meanwhile, remains a thorn in Beijing's side.
