Topline

In a Thursday letter, the Home Committee on Homeland Safety requested Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal to reply questions sparked by incendiary allegations of safety violations from the social media firm’s former head of safety Peiter Zatko.

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal is going through questions following a bombshell whistleblower criticism.

Getty Photographs

Key Info

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the committee, and Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-Mass.), chairwoman of the cybersecurity subcommittee, expressed their “deep concern” concerning the allegations made by Zatko in a whistleblower criticism filed with the Division of Justice, the Securities and Trade Fee and the Federal Commerce Fee final month and first reported on Tuesday.

Zatko, who labored at Twitter from late 2020 till January 2022, claimed Twitter failed to guard consumer information and knowingly misled buyers and regulators.

Clarke and Thompson famous Twitter has a “staggering safety to-do checklist” if any of Zatko’s assertions are true.

The lawmakers requested written responses from Agrawal by September 8 on eight questions associated to Zatko’s assertions, particularly specializing in a declare that Twitter knew its group centered on content material moderation was understaffed and the way it plans to deal with political misinformation forward of November’s midterm elections.

Key Background

Twitter has denied all of Zatko’s accusations, and Agrawal known as the whistleblower criticism a “false narrative riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies, and introduced with out necessary context” in a memo to staff Tuesday. Clarke and Thompson’s letter comes after a number of Democratic and Republican lawmakers known as for an investigation into the corporate, pointing to Zatko’s declare that Twitter knowingly fell brief on its 2011 settlement with the FTC on protections for consumer privateness and safety.

Tangent

A five-day trial for Twitter’s lawsuit towards world’s wealthiest man Elon Musk trying to implement Musk’s $44 billion buy of the corporate will happen in October. Zatko alleged that Twitter has deliberately undercounted the presence of faux and spam accounts on the platform, a declare beforehand introduced ahead by Musk. The billionaire has stayed surprisingly quiet concerning the accusations, although he tweeted Tuesday a whistleblowing meme and a screenshot of a Washington Publish report about Twitter’s board’s data of “spam detection” efforts on the firm.