Twitter CEO Shreds Blockbuster Whistleblower Report as ‘False Narrative Riddle With Inconsistencies’ in Staff Memo

Jackson RichmanAug 23rd, 2022, 11:15 am
 
Parag Agrawal

Kevin Dietsch, Getty

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal decried what he called a “false narrative” from a former executive whistleblower alleging that the social media site buried “egregious deficiencies” and threats to democracy.

The Washington Post and CNN obtained the whistleblower complaint that was filed last month with the Department of Justice, Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission by former head of security Peiter “Mudge” Zatko.

Among many issues, the reports describe allegations of “major security problems that pose a threat to its own users’ personal information, to company shareholders, to national security, and to democracy.”

Agrawal blasted the complaint Zatko personally in a memo to staff that was shared by CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan.

“There are news reports outlining claims about Twitter’s privacy, security, and data protection practices that were made by Mudge Zatko, a former Twitter executive who was terminated in January 2022 for ineffective leadership and poor performance,” the message aggressively begins. “We are reviewing the redacted claims that have been published, but what we’ve seen so far is a false narrative that is riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies, and presented without important context.”

Agrawal goes on from there, closing with a general statement pointing to unspecified action.

“We will pursue all paths to defend our integrity as a company and set the record straight,” he wrote.

Mudge Zatko summarized his allegations, according to CNN, as covering “egregious deficiencies, negligence, willful ignorance, and threats to national security and democracy.”

The Washington Post writes of the whistleblower allegations:

Twitter violated the terms of an 11-year-old settlement with the Federal Trade Commission by falsely claiming that it had a solid security plan. Zatko’s complaint alleges he had warned colleagues that half the company’s servers were running out-of-date and vulnerable software and that executives withheld dire facts about the number of breaches and lack of protection for user data, instead presenting directors with rosy charts measuring unimportant changes.

Additionally, the complaint “alleges the company prioritized user growth over reducing spam, though unwanted content made the user experience worse. Executives stood to win individual bonuses of as much as $10 million tied to increases in daily users, the complaint asserts, and nothing explicitly for cutting spam,” according to The Washington Post.

This allegation could validate Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s concerns about Twitter bots – a concern that Musk said Twitter has yet to tackle and therefore led to him trying to pull out of his agreement to acquire the social media platform.

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