Elon Musk grants outside writers unprecedented access to internal Twitter information and instructs current head of trust and security to provide screenshots of user accounts.
Screenshots showing internal systems limited to a relatively small number of people responsible for moderating content were shared by journalist Bari Weiss on Thursday. The images are watermarked – a transparent label – to indicate that they were taken from the employee’s point of view twitters Trust and Safety Director, Ella Irwin.
The watermarked screenshots, taken since December 7, 2022, raised concerns about whether Weiss had access to Irwin’s internal account, which according to people with knowledge of Twitter’s systems also included access to sensitive information such as a user’s private messages would mean.
Irwin later clarified that she took the screenshots herself to prevent such a scenario. “For security reasons, I provided the requested screenshots so that we could ensure that no PII” or personally identifiable information “was disclosed,” Irwin said on Twitter. “We have not granted reporters that access, and no, reporters have not accessed user DMs” or direct messages.
The watermarks were added to employee accounts after Twitter was hacked in 2020, people said, a move designed to make it easier for Twitter to know where screenshots of internal systems came from.
Weiss did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The screenshots were shared as part of the “Twitter Files,” a collection of internal documents and emails from former Twitter employees musk handed over to outside reporters who are now publishing them.
Musk said earlier this month that Weiss and another author, Matt Taibbi, have unrestricted access to the Twitter files. Those familiar with Twitter’s systems are concerned that such broad access could allow Twitter to violate its 2022 privacy agreement with the Federal Trade Commission.
“Feels like Weiss’ thread should suffice for that FTC to open an investigation into a violation of the Consent Decree and perhaps receive a subpoena for Twitter’s internal access logs,” tweeted Alex Stamos, formerly head of security at Meta Platforms Inc. and now at Stanford Internet Observatory.
As part of Twitter’s FTC agreement, employee access to sensitive user account data is only granted to those who have a valid business justification for access to that data. The executives who would have approved that access or investigated its abuse have left the company.
“Authors have broad and growing access to Twitter’s files,” Weiss tweeted Thursday. “The only stipulation we agreed to was that the material be published first on Twitter.”
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