Lily Hay Newma, senior writer at WIRED, joins Cheddar News to talk privacy concerns for Twitter users as Elon Musk takes over. 

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Twitter's Privacy Concerns Under Elon Musk

back on cheddar news everyone last month, Tesla founder Elon musk made a $44 billion deal to buy the social media platform twitter and take the company private. Now musk is offering a slew of potential changes that he plans to implement, like taking on twitter's algorithm to address spam bots. However, the one thing top of mind when it comes to the deal is privacy concerns. So lay it all out in an article for wired is senior writer lily Hay Newman who joins us now. Great to have you here. Thanks so much for joining us. So why is privacy one of the top concerns here? I think the big point here is that when there's any type of regime change or sort of takeover of a service like this, things can change about how the company or how the organization is handling user privacy, user security and that transition is not in users control and you know, can be for better or for worse, but is just something that can always happen with a private platform. Alright, so Elon musk has said he wants to take on and defeat the bots here. He's also talked about authenticating all humans on twitter. Could this be one thing that maybe helps from a privacy standpoint getting rid of these bots and only having real people on the platform? Yeah, it's a complicated issue. Certainly the idea of reducing or eliminating, you know, spamming bots on twitter that could potentially reduce scams, you know, could reduce all sorts of problematic and abusive behavior on twitter, that would be a positive thing, but it depends how you go about quote unquote authenticating all humans. You know, if that involves uh folks having to identify and authenticate themselves to twitter using like you know I. D. S. You know government issued I. D. S. Real name policies, something like that. That can actually be very harmful to use your privacy and chilling to speech. Whereas something like just doing a the equivalent of like a capture or one of those things that proves that you are a human that can be really helpful but that proving that you're a human of some kind is different than proving who which human you are, who specifically you are. There's also been some some running concerns and theories out there about what Elon musk would do with our direct messages per se. There has been some who believe, you know, he could potentially have access to those direct messages and give them to government agencies, there's others who say look he might update it and make it encrypted. Like we see with other messaging services as well what sort of sort of view on how Elon musk will handle our R. D. M. S here. Right? So I think my understanding is that because of some regulation that's in effect, he likely wouldn't be able to sort of personally view all messages but certainly conceptually that is, you know hypothetically a concern with any takeover like this. And I think you raised the most important point, which is how would a new regime at twitter handle government requests, you know, requests for information about users and you know, would they attempt to stand up for users and you know, not just hand everything over at the first question, would they attempt to withhold you know, when they legally can and to the question about encryption, write something that twitter DmS in particular has has not had is end to end encryption or an encrypted protection where only the two people you know, taking part in the conversation can view the messages and the company can't, that's a protection Twitter DmS do not currently have and haven't had but musk has said he supports it and wants to implement end to end encryption for twitter DM So that would be a great protection if it happened, but who knows if it will. The famous biographer, walter IsaAcson announced that he's doing a biography on Elon musk and he was asked over the weekend by the new york times what his take is on Elon musk's fascination with twitter. And walter. IsaAcson told the new york times quote, Ellen has always been fascinated by twitter and he deeply understands how it can be used And maybe how it can be improved. His fascination with Twitter does not surprise me. I think this leads to the $44 billion Twitter look like under Elon Musk? Well, I really couldn't begin to tell you, but I agree with the point that the fascination is clearly there, the desire to get the capital together to do this take over. Uh you know clearly this money could have been spent in countless other ways as well. So there's a you know drive and a focus for him on twitter and it's going to be, it'll it'll be a journey, it'll be a roller coaster for all of us. Um there has also been some skeptics out there obviously who have been concerned about misinformation, disinformation given the fact that Elon musk has been so ardent about free speech concerns on twitter, what does the platform sort of look like when it comes to that? There have there was a piece in the atlantic about a week or so ago that basically said maybe it goes back to the twitter of 2016 when former president trump was on the platform, you had misinformation and harassment ramping running rampant on the platform. Is that sort of maybe the way that it's going to be? Yes, very possible. And I think that ties back to what we were discussing a minute ago about why the question of authenticate all humans and what that means is so important because if users are being asked to provide documentation of their specific personal identity and if twitter holds all of that information and if no one can speak anonymously or pseudonymously on the platform that really impacts people's ability to speak on the platform at all and, you know, not just in the U. S. But globally. That can be very chilling to speech if everything someone says is, you know, tied to their specific personal identity and in many ways reduces people's ability in many sort of repressive context to speak freely wired Senior writer lily Hay Newman, Great to have you on here. Thank you so very much for joining us.