Global legal perils beset a downsized Twitter

Twitter faces a mass of forces abroad and in Washington that aim to compel the company to obey privacy rules, speech limits and other regulations as Elon Musk remakes the service. Musk's word is law inside Twitter now, but his disdain for rules will encounter tough pushback from governments around the world — just as the company has lost most of the people who managed its relationships with regulators and legislators. Twitter's biggest challenges lie abroad, particularly in Europe, which has been steadily tightening tech regulations for years. Twitter has lost its head of policy in Brussels, Stephen Turner, even as the European Union is set to start putting into force its Digital Services Act, which lays out new rules for tech platforms around misinformation, illegal content, and transparency. In authoritarian countries, Twitter has consistently fought against court orders for user information and opposed data localization laws. Twitter sued the Indian government in July 2022 over takedown orders and faces challenges in Japan, Russia, Turkey, and South Korea. In the US, Twitter also has multiple major policy and legal concerns. The Federal Trade Commission has its eyes on the company's 2011 consent decree covering users' data privacy, which Twitter would face steep fines and penalties for violating.