Twitter Plans to Subpoena Sen. Warren in Legal Battle Against FTC

Twitter is reportedly planning to issue to subpoena Sen. Elizabeth Warren in connection with its ongoing legal battle against the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

The social media platform plans to issue the subpoena as part of a lawsuit in which it is asking the court to scrap a consent order with the FTC regarding data breaches, Reuters reported Thursday (July 20), citing a court filing by Twitter.

In its filing to the U.S. federal court in San Francisco, Twitter said the FTC has shown bias and overreach in its investigation, according to the report.

Twitter is asking for communications between Warren’s office and the FTC and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) related to Twitter or its owner Elon Musk, the report said.

The consent decree was reached about 12 years ago, in 2011, after two data breaches at Twitter, and the social media company agreed at the time that it would not mislead users about privacy protections, according to the report.

Last year, after Twitter laid off thousands of employees and cut costs soon after being acquired by Musk, there were concerns that the company may not have the resources to comply with the consent decree, the report said.

In other recent news from Twitter, Musk said Saturday (July 15) in a conversation on Twitter that the company has seen an almost 50% drop in ad revenue that — coupled with its debt load — has left it cash flow negative.

After Reuters reported about the comment, Musk said Sunday (July 16): “This article is negative, of course, but we did not see the increase in advertising revenue that was expected in June. July is a bit more promising.”

Days earlier, on Friday (July 14), it was reported that Twitter’s new competitor, the Meta-owned social media platform Threads, was experiencing a drop-off in growth and engagement about a week after its debut.

For example, marketing intelligence firm Sensor Tower found that Threads’ number of daily active users had dropped around 20% and the average time spent per user had fallen 50%, from 20 minutes to 10 minutes, CNBC reported Friday (July 14).

Data from digital data and analytics company Similarweb also showed a decline at the new social media platform, according to the report.

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