July 13 (UPI) — Elon Musk’s X Corp. filed a motion Thursday with the U.S. District Court of Northern California to overturn or modify a Federal Trade Commission order that oversees how Twitter uses data collected from users.
“This motion asks the Court to rein in an investigation that has spiraled out of control and become tainted by bias, and to terminate a misfit consent order that no longer can serve any proper equitable purpose,” the X Corp. motion said.
The motion asks the court to terminate or stay the FTC consent order and to issue a protective order staying an FTC deposition of Musk.
X Corp. is Twitter’s successor company.
The FTC took action against Twitter in May 2022 for allegedly “deceptively using account security data for targeted advertising.”
According to the FTC this violates a 2011 FTC order and settlement that, “explicitly prohibited the company from misrepresenting its privacy and security practices.”
Under that order a few months before Musk bought Twitter, the FTC said Twitter must pay a $150 million penalty and is banned from deceptively collecting data.
“As the complaint notes, Twitter obtained data from users on the pretext of harnessing it for security purposes but then ended up also using the data to target users with ads,” said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan in a statement when the FTC action was taken. “This practice affected more than 140 million Twitter users, while boosting Twitter’s primary source of revenue.”
The FTC wants to depose Musk in this matter.
The FTC said Twitter asked users for email addresses and phone numbers to protect their accounts, but then used the data to target specific users with advertising.
X Corp.’s motion argues that,”The Court should prevent further abuses by terminating or modifying the Consent Order. At a minimum, the Court should order the FTC to respond to X Corp.’s reasonable requests for information so that it can assess the extent of the agency’s misconduct and necessary remedies, while staying all enforcement of the Consent Order (including the deposition of Mr. Musk) until that process is complete.”
Musk alleges in the Thursday court filing that the FTC improperly attempted to influence the content and the outcome of an independent assessment of Twitter’s practices.
