The Federal Trade Commission says it is tracking Elon Musk's Twitter 'with deep concern' as top privacy execs quit

• The FTC said it's tracking developments at Twitter "with deep concern," per Reuters.
• It made the comment after four top execs in charge of privacy at Twitter reportedly resigned.

The Federal Trade Commission said it is "tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern" after four of the company's privacy and compliance officers quit, according to Reuters.

"No CEO or company is above the law, and companies must follow our consent decrees," Douglas Farrar, FTC public affairs director, told Reuters."Our revised content order gives us new tools to ensure compliance, and we are prepared to use them."

The comment comes amid a chaotic two weeks for Twitter while its new owner, Elon Musk, tries to turn around the troubled company through sweeping team changes, recalibrating the social media site's content filters, and a revamp of its paid services.

"Without significant subscription revenue, there is a good chance Twitter will not survive the upcoming economic downturn," Musk told employees on Thursday morning as he announced an end to remote work. Twitter has also fired half of its global workforce, roughly 3,700 people, alongside several other tech giants that conducted mass layoffs.

The company has seen shakeups in top management this week too. Yoel Roth, Twitter's head of trust and safety, updated his Twitter profile on Thursday to denote that he is no longer in the role.

Lea Kissner, Twitter's chief security officer, tweeted on the same day that she had quit.

Chief Privacy Officer Damien Kieran and Chief Compliance Officer Marianne Fogarty also resigned, according to Reuters, citing a Slack message among Twitter's staff posted by an internal lawyer.

Their departures could put Twitter at risk of potentially violating the FTC's regulations. These top executives would have been overseeing a privacy program that Twitter agreed to undertake after it was fined $150 million in May for collecting users' email addresses and phone numbers to target these people with ads.

Musk and his personal lawyer, Alex Spiro, sent employees an email on Thursday saying he intends to fully comply with all requirements from the FTC.

"I cannot emphasize enough that Twitter will do whatever it takes to adhere to both the letter and the spirit of the FTC consent decree," Musk wrote in his email. "Anything you read to the contrary is absolutely false."

Spiro, who is Twitter's acting head of legal, sought to allay reported concerns from employees that they could go to jail if Twitter breached the FTC's rules. "It is the company's obligation. It is the company's burden. It is the company's liability," he wrote.

The FTC, Spiro, and Musk did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment. Twitter no longer employs its communications department.