The TLDR version is that Twitter negotiated a “light touch” from European privacy regulators by claiming itself to be mainly based in Ireland, in terms of development strategy and policy management. In order to maintain this status, they were obligated to follow certain processes and keep specific EU-based people involved in those processes.
Musk has, obviously, blown all that up. If the Irish data protection authority recognizes reality and makes an official determination that Twitter has lost its previously negotiated status, every individual European state’s data-privacy agency can exert oversight on the company, with fines for violations potentially running into the billions of dollars.
At this point, it’s not really his plans. It’s what he’s actively done. He fired the majority of the staff, the ones who kept Twitter running. He decided to make it where you can verify yourself simply by paying a small fee. He banned people for making parody accounts to mock the problems at Twitter.
He actually doesn’t seem to have any actual plans. He’s just shooting from the hip, doing things that don’t make any sense. And all the while he’s on Twitter attacking everyone who points out his issues. He comes off as unstable, like he has no idea what he’s doing.
That said, he did have some very wild ideas, like turning Twitter into a bank or adding paywalled videos. Basically mimicking other companies.
Oh, and there’s one thing @Shalmanese forgot: Musk flaunting an FTC consent order. Due to some privacy-based fraud, there are special things it currently has to do to prove it is following privacy laws. And even though he’s now backtracked on it, they don’t really have the staff to handle it.
Do note that it’s not just people he fired. A lot of people left. There’s a complete brain drain going on over there.
Thing is, Genius Tech Billionaire Innovators™ like Musk do not concern themselves with mundane minutiae like privacy regulations, especially from European socialists. Their job is to plow ahead and do what they want, and if they run afoul of regulations, to rant incessantly about heavy-handed government oppression. I doubt that Musk has even heard of the GDPR. It may be that some underling has, and has tried to warn Musk about potential issues. Another job of a Genius Tech Billionaire Innovator™ like Musk is to fire such people.
It is in fact specifically associated with Twitter. In the old days, before they stabilized their architecture, they would show you a Fail Whale image when a failure prevented the site from loading.
Specifically, a lot of the top legal talent left; the ones who were responsible for certifying that Twitter was complying with the FTC order. Their parting words were apparently that the software engineers now would have to fulfill that compliance role.
So in addition to having to try to keep Twitter running, the software engineers suddenly had a legal function dumped on them. Without legal training. And if they make a mistake in that compliance function, they could be personally liable.
Yep, fun time to be a software engineer at Twitter.
Speaking as someone who oversaw a regulatory compliance testing group, the notion that we could’ve passed any of that upstream to development (much less testing or god forbid production) is laughable. It’s just some stupid shit he made up, and I’m glad legal came back and clarified it.
I didn’t take it as so much as passing off as a warning. They weren’t going to be doing it anymore, as they no longer worked there, so the engineers would have to.
Who is “he” and what did legal clarify? It didn’t sound like anything was clarified at all, much less by legal.
No, not between. Exactly what they are willing to pay, and the employee is willing to accept.
What is an apple at the grocery store worth? If the store sets the price at $1.99/lb., and you buy it, that’s what it’s worth. Not “somewhere between $1.89 and $2.29”.
