The chaos sown by the arrival of Elon Musk at the head of Twitter worries European regulators, who claim to be monitoring the situation. closely “.
The day after the completion of the takeover, Thierry Breton, the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, reminded Musk that the social network should continue to respect European law.
EU fears Twitter is no longer GDPR compliant
Obviously, this warning was not to be taken lightly. The Irish Data Protection Commission, which oversees the privacy of some of Silicon Valley’s biggest companies with European headquarters in Ireland, held a meeting to clarify next steps with Twitter staff. at Dublin.
Indeed, the dismissal of nearly half of the platform’s employees by Elon Musk as well as the departure of many executives in key divisions such as privacy protection, security or customer trust raise fears of breaches of compliance with the GDPR in Europe.
As a reminder, the Irish Commission, like all EU supervisory bodies, has seen its powers reinforced by the GDPR. This regulation allows it to impose fines on companies of up to 4% of their annual turnover in the event of a serious violation of data confidentiality.
The American authorities also in the game
Europeans are not the only ones to keep an eye on Twitter since its takeover, however. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the US federal agency responsible for enforcing consumer law and controlling anti-competitive practices, also explained, “ following recent developments at Twitter with deep concern “. She insisted on recalling that “ no CEO or company is above the law “.
The management of Twitter by Elon Musk is particularly muscular. In addition to laying off thousands of people, the billionaire also imposed the end of telework and did not hesitate to mention a potential bankruptcy of the company, which must absolutely depend less on advertising, according to him. For this, it has deployed a new subscription system for 8 dollars per month, but this has created great confusion by certifying accounts that are not necessarily authentic. As a result, the new version of Twitter Blue had to be suspended.
Source : Bloomberg
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