In a latest update, Twitter Inc’s new owner Elon Musk on Thursday cautioned that there is a possibility of the social media platform going bankrupt, closing a chaotic day that included a warning from a U.S. privacy regulator and the resignation of the company’s trust and safety head.
Bloomberg news reported that the billionaire-investor on his first mass call with employees said that he could not rule out the chance of bankruptcy, two weeks after taking over the company in a $44 billion deal that, according to credit experts, has left Twitter’s finances in an uncertain position.
In his first company-wide email, earlier in the day, Musk said that Twitter would not be able to “survive the upcoming economic downturn” if it did not succeed in boosting subscription revenue to compensate for the falling advertising income. This was informed by three people who have seen the message to Reuters.
Two people familiar with the matter told Reuters that Yoel Roth, who has headed Twitter’s response to counter hate speech, misinformation and spam on the service, resigned on Thursday.
In his Twitter bio on Thursday, Roth described himself as “Former Head of Trust & Safety” at the social media platform. Although Roth did not respond to any comments, Bloomberg and Platformer were the first to report his resignation.
Twitter’s Chief Information Security Officer Lea Kissner tweeted that she had quit, early on Tuesday. Among others, Chief Privacy Officer Damien Kieran and Chief Compliance Officer Marianne Fogarty also left the company, according to an internal message written to Twitter’s Slack messaging system by an attorney on its privacy team, which was reported by Reuters on Thursday.
Robin Wheeler, the company’s top ad sales executive, said to employees in a memo that she was staying at the company, denying earlier media reports that she too would be resigning from the company.
Wheeler tweeted late on Thursday, “I’m still here.”
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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission expressed “deep concern” towards Twitter after the resignation of three privacy and compliance officers.
Late on Thursday, Musk’s attorney Alex Spiro informed some employees in an email that Twitter would remain in compliance.
Sprio wrote, “We spoke to the FTC today about our continuing obligations and have a constructive ongoing dialogue.”
He further added, “I understand that there have been employees at Twitter who do not even work on the FTC matter commenting that they could (go) to jail if we were not in compliance – that is simply not how this works.”