The troubling free speech implications of a recent whistle-blower complaint against Twitter

A whistle-blower complaint?filed?last week by Twitter’s former head of security, Peter ‘Mudge’ Zatko, has prompted urgent inquiries by several governments including the US and several EU nations (CNN,?Washington Post). The former hacker, US government scientist and senior Google security expert’s claims also feature heavily in the Termination Letter Elon Musk?filed?recently with the US Securities and Exchange Commission as part of the billionaire’s ongoing attempt to exit his $44billion deal to purchase Twitter. (Mail,?Independent).

While much of the media attention has focused on Zatko’s claim that Twitter’s leadership misled investors, government regulators and its own board about the company’s security vulnerabilities, buried within this 84-page filing are allegations that suggest Big Tech’s commitment to the ‘safeguarding’ of online privacy, free speech and freedom of expression might not be quite as firm or unwavering as the architects of the UK’s Online Safety Bill would have us believe.

Among the document’s free speech ‘lowlights’ is the claim that despite Twitter’s service being blocked in China, the company is in fact financially “dependent upon revenue coming from Chinese entities”. Quite what the “Chinese entities” in question get out of this peculiar arrangement is never stated explicitly, although the filing does allege that “Twitter executives knew that accepting Chinese money risked endangering users in China and elsewhere” because the information they were receiving “would allow them to identify and learn sensitive information about Chinese users who successfully circumvented the block, and other [Chinese] users around the world”. Despite acknowledging that this was “a major ethical compromise” – not least because those “circumventing the block” will tend to be pro-democracy dissidents living in fear of being discovered by the Chinese authorities – the executives in question apparently went on to tell Mr Zatko that the company was “too dependent upon the revenue stream to do anything other than attempt to increase it”.

Zatko is particularly damning in his assessment of Twitter CEO, Parag Agrawal, whom he recalls having suggested the company should “consider ceding” to the Russian Federation’s censorship and surveillance demands, effectively becoming “complicit” with the Putin regime. Why? Because it would be “a way to grow users in Russia”.

Finally, and contrary to Mr Agrawal’s public statements, Zatko alleges that Twitter executives had “little or no personal incentive” to monitor the number of automated ‘bots’ being used on the platform to orchestrate attempts by various state and non-state actors to manipulate public opinion by artificially amplifying certain viewpoints. Senior executives were instead compensated solely based on Twitter’s number of monetizable daily active users – a “perverse” incentive structure, as attorney Michael P. Senger?notes, as it could easily serve to?increase?the number of bots operating on the platform.

Mr Agrawal vehemently disputes these claims and accuses his former colleague of presenting a “false narrative” of the company’s inner workings. (Telegraph). He might be right, of course, but it’s worth pointing out that Zatko has worked at the highest levels of government and industry for the past 30 years, and many leading voices in the field of cybersecurity have been quick to come forward and endorse his credentials and track record – indeed, one former Twitter software engineer even?shared data?that appeared to support one of Zatko’s specific claims regarding the company’s mismanagement of data. (The Verge).

The US Senate Judiciary will question ‘Mudge’ about his allegations on September 13th. (Times). Perhaps the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) Committee tasked with scrutinising the Online Safety Bill should now do the same.

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