Musk paints bleak picture for Twitter as executives leave

On Thursday, more Twitter executives quit. Among them were Kathleen Pacini, Human Resources Leader; Yoel Roth, Head of Trust & Safety; and Robin Wheeler, advertising director, according to four people familiar with the matter. There has been confusion about some executives, including when Ms. Wheeler wrote in an internal letter on Thursday afternoon, seen by The Times: “I’m still here. It’s really hard now.”

It followed the resignations of three senior Twitter executives responsible for security, privacy and compliance on Wednesday, according to two people familiar with the matter and internal documents seen by The New York Times.

The departing security executives are Leah Kesner, Chief Information Security Officer; Damien Keran, Chief Privacy Officer; and Marian Fogarty, Chief Compliance Officer. They resigned a day before Twitter’s deadline to send a compliance report to the Federal Trade Commission, which oversees the company’s privacy practices as part of a 2011 settlement.

Twitter has typically reviewed its products for privacy issues before they are presented to users, to avoid additional FTC fines and remain committed to the settlement. But because of the rapid pace of product development under Mr. Musk, engineers can be forced to “self-certify” that their projects meet privacy requirements, one employee wrote in an internal letter seen by The Times.

The employee wrote: “Elon has shown that he is only interested in making up for the losses he has incurred as a result of his failure to exit his binding obligation to purchase Twitter.” The person warned that changes to FTC ratings on Twitter could result in heavy fines and put people working for the company at risk.

“This would place an enormous amount of personal, professional, and legal risk on engineers: I expect you will all be pressured by management to push for changes likely to lead to major accidents,” the employee wrote.

“We are following recent developments on Twitter with deep concern,” Douglas Farrar, a spokesman for the Federal Trade Commission, said in a statement. “No CEO or company is above the law, and companies must follow our approval decisions. Our amended consent order gives us new tools to ensure compliance, and we are ready to use them.”