Markey, Blumenthal, Wyden Demand FTC Reject X’s Frivolous Petition to Evade Privacy Obligations

Letter Text (PDF) Washington (July 22, 2026) - Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), member of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, along with Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) today wrote to Andrew Ferguson, Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), urging the agency to reject X’s petition to terminate the company’s privacy responsibilities under a 2022 FTC order. The FTC unanimously approved the 2022 order in response to Twitter’s repeated privacy violations, which were well publicized before Elon Musk purchased the company and rebranded it as “X.” In its petition, X makes the extraordinary claim that rebranding Twitter as X somehow frees the company from the privacy obligations it inherited. Beyond this claim, X’s other arguments — that the order’s compliance is too costly, that the company should be trusted to self-regulate, and that ending the obligations under this order would serve the public interest in the American AI race — are similarly frivolous. The senators therefore call for the Commission to reject X’s self-serving attempt to evade its legal responsibilities. In the letter, the lawmakers wrote , “Despite X’s arguments otherwise, the company is no stranger to the 2022 order; it is Twitter’s successor. Although Twitter rebranded as X in 2023, X kept Twitter’s assets, its users, and their data. Notably, the FTC order contemplated such a corporate rebranding. The 2022 order defines ‘Respondent’ to include Twitter’s ‘successors and assigns,’ and its carve-out for genuinely distinct businesses applies only to entities that do not ‘collect, maintain, use, disclose, access, or provide access to’ data that previously enabled Twitter’s services — a condition X plainly does not meet. A name change and new leadership do not undo that legal continuity. If they did, any company could escape an FTC order simply by merging with a new entity or changing its name. The Commission should require X to comply with the 2022 order it inherited.” The lawmakers continued , “X’s claim that compliance with the 2022 order is too costly rings hollow given the company’s scale and the nature of the obligations it knowingly inherited. X puts the cost of compliance at roughly $17 million over the past four years — or around $4.25 million per year. When Musk bought Twitter in 2022, he valued the company at $44 billion, making those routine compliance costs a fraction of the value assigned to the company just a few years ago. Furthermore, Musk, the company’s owner, is the richest person in the world, with sufficient personal wealth to support the company. More importantly, independent privacy and security oversight is not an optional expense to be cut when it becomes inconvenient. A company cannot earn early release from a privacy order simply by saying that compliance costs money.” ###