Privacy groups urge FTC to keep monitoring Elon Musk’s X

In short: Privacy and consumer advocates are urging the FTC to reject X’s request to end federal oversight of its privacy practices.

What happened

Fifteen privacy and consumer protection groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the National Consumers League, submitted comments asking the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to keep its existing order in place for X, the company formerly known as Twitter.

The FTC order was created after the agency said Twitter used a coding error to share people’s phone numbers and email addresses for ad targeting, even though users had provided that information for two-factor authentication (an extra login step, like a second lock on your door). The order requires independent audits and lets the FTC demand documents to check compliance without starting a new lawsuit.

X has asked the FTC to end the order. The company said the requirements are expensive and unnecessary, and argued that changes since Elon Musk bought Twitter, including rebranding and other shifts, mean the old risks no longer apply. X also said it now faces similar rules in Europe under GDPR, the European Union’s privacy law.

The advocacy groups disagreed. In their letter, they argued X still runs the same kind of social platform and still uses user data for ads, and that new AI work creates added privacy risks. They pointed to concerns about training X’s chatbot Grok on user posts without clear consent, plus other recent controversies and investigations.

Former US Attorney General William Barr submitted comments supporting X and criticized the FTC’s information demands as excessive.

Why it matters

If the FTC ends the order, X could face fewer checks on how it uses personal data. For everyday users, that can affect whether private contact details or online activity get reused in ways they did not expect, especially as AI tools are trained on large amounts of posts.

Source: Arstechnica