Privacy advocates are telling the FTC not to loosen oversight of X. The deadline for public comments was July 2, and the message is clear: Elon Musk’s platform still can’t be trusted with user data.
The EFF and allied groups filed warnings that X’s bid to end FTC audits should be rejected outright. X argued that changes Musk made mean the agency’s oversight is no longer necessary. Advocates disagree — strongly.
Here’s the backstory. Twitter got hit with an FTC consent order after a coding error leaked users’ contact info — data submitted for 2FA — into ad targeting systems. The order forced costly independent audits and gave the FTC document-demand authority. Musk inherited it when he bought the company.
Now X wants out. The company says it’s a different business. But advocates point out that X runs the same social media platform, still mines user data for ads, and now has a whole new AI business hungry for training data. The GDPR is already investigating X for scraping European users’ data to train Grok without proper consent.
Former Attorney General William Barr submitted comments supporting X, calling the FTC’s information demands excessive. But advocates say X’s legal arguments are misleading — the cases X cites don’t actually support its position.
One case involved a 20-year-old order terminated by a sunset policy. The other was modified after 16 years of compliance. X’s order is four years old. And Musk agreed to it when he bought Twitter.
