Elon Musk and a former Facebook Security Officer got into it on Twitter

• Elon Musk fought on Twitter with a former security guard at Facebook over “Twitter Files second.”
• Alex Stamos tweeted, “Musk fired a lawyer” to tell him what happens if non employees have access to users’ messages.
• Musk said that Stamos was “a propaganda platform”, and he had told Musk to be transparent.

After the release of “Twitter Files Part 2”, Elon Musk and Alex Stamos, Facebook’s former security guard, argued on Twitter.

On Thursday, conservative columnist Bari Weiss tweeted the latest threadof “files” an installment about“Twitter’s secret blacklists” The “investigation” revealed that employees at Twitter “have blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users,” Weiss tweeted.

Journalist Matt Taibbi tweeted the first part ofLast week’s “Twitter Files”, Musk described asInternal communications that would reveal Twitter attempted to censor free speech

Weiss’s Thursday tweet thread showed Twitter’s internal profile of Libs of TikTok. Weiss stated that it “rose to this degree of scrutiny.” A sidebar that included direct messages from the account was visible. This raised concern from Twitter users like Stamos.

Abraham Gutman is a health reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer. tweeted a screenshotWeiss tweeted about Libs Of TikTok and wrote “.@elonmusk, yes or no — do Weiss and Taibbi have access to users’ DMs? It would be great to have clear information about this screen as well as a simple yes/no answer to the question.

Stamos retweeted Gutman’s tweet and said, “Musk fired his lawyer responsible for telling him what will happen if Weiss/Taibbi click that button.”

—Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) December 9, 2022

Musk confirmed this Tuesday that he firedJames Baker, Twitter’s deputy general counsel, was “in light of concerns regarding Baker’s potential role in suppression information important to public dialogue,” referring to the first release in the “Twitter Files.”

At the start of Musk’s takeover of  Twitter, he fired legal chiefVijaya Gadde was behind the social media platform’s decision to ban former president Donald Trump following the January 6, 2021 insurrection on the Capitol. 

“Hopefully that button doesn’t actually work for them. Twitter has put a lot effort into internal access control,” Stamos tweetedPhotos by Weiss “If these two were provisioned DM access I expect that it’s, at a minimal, an FTC-reportable security incident.”

Weiss also shared photos of computer screens showing the internal-company view of conservative accounts like Dan Bongino and Charlie Kirk, who she claims were targeted by Twitter’s blacklisting and “shadow banning” — the practice of limiting a tweet’s visibility.

Ella Irwin (new head of trust and security at Twitter) clarified in a response to Tom McKay, senior IT and cybersecurity journalist, that the screenshots were hers.

Irwin tweeted that the screenshots were requested by me for security reasons so that no PII could be exposed. “We didn’t give this access for reporters and no, reporter were not able to access user DMs.”

Musk replied that Weiss’s thread “clearly explains, the rules weren’t enforced against left but against right.” Stamos replied that Musk should provide the transparency required for external groups to verify that statement.

Musk responded to Stamos with, “You operate a propagandist platform.” 

After Musk’s reply, Stamos tweeted that he was being targeted by “a wave” of antisemitic and racist slurs. 

The first release by Taibbi showedThe employees had discussed the possibility to censor the New York Post’s storyInformation about Hunter Biden’s laptop during Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election campaign. Twitter has a policy that doesn’t publish information related to hacking. Some Twitter employees had their personal data shared after the files were released.