Musk’s X asks FTC to end audits, advocates warn privacy risk

Musk’s X has asked the Federal Trade Commission to terminate a 2022 consent order that subjects the company to independent audits and document demands, and the FTC faces public comments on the petition ahead of a July 2 deadline. Fifteen privacy and consumer groups have filed a joint letter urging the agency to refuse X’s request, arguing the company poses "a serious risk to Americans’ privacy and data security."

What is X asking the FTC to do?

X is asking the FTC to end the 2022 consent order on the basis that changes to the company make the order unnecessary and duplicative. The company argues the rebrand from Twitter to X and new regulatory obligations under the European Union’s GDPR mean the FTC’s monitoring imposes burdensome costs and is redundant. The initial 2022 order was issued after the FTC found a coding error had caused then-Twitter to improperly share users’ contact information, data originally submitted for two-factor authentication, for ad targeting.

X says its transformation eliminates the need for ongoing agency oversight; critics call that legal reasoning flawed. Advocates point out the order gives the FTC authority to demand documents and require costly independent audits, mechanisms they say remain essential if X continues to use user data for advertising and new AI projects.

What are advocates warning about?

Fifteen groups, including Demand Progress, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and the National Consumers League, co-signed a letter asking the FTC to "unequivocally reject X Corp.’s brazen attempt to escape accountability at the expense of the American people." They argue X’s recent product and data moves increase, not decrease, the need for oversight. The letter adds that "X Corp.’s petition fails to clear the demanding legal standard necessary to grant the extraordinary action the corporation is requesting."

Advocates list several concrete concerns. They note Grok’s global backlash and a lawsuit from three girls who allege the chatbot generated child sexual abuse material and other non-consensual intimate images. They cite a previous incident in which "2.8 billion records leaked from the platform." Advocates also say X collected "hundreds of millions of posts on the X platform" for AI training without meaningful or explicit user consent, and they point to research Cambridge Analytica cited that "73 percent of X users were unaware their tweets trained Grok." Finally, they highlight an ongoing probe into X’s alleged unauthorized collection of European users’ data to train Grok without valid GDPR consent.

How do legal and political voices line up?

Not all submissions favor continued FTC oversight. Former US Attorney General William Barr filed comments backing X, criticizing what he called hundreds of FTC information demands after Musk bought Twitter as excessive and urging the agency to reconsider how permanent consent orders should be treated. Advocates contest X’s legal comparisons, noting the cases X cites do not support blanket termination after corporate restructuring and pointing out the 2022 order is "merely four years old."

Advocates emphasize that Musk accepted the costs and obligations tied to the order when he acquired the company, and they argue that X remains "in the exact same business of operating a social media platform," while adding new uses for consumer data through AI.

Why it matters

The dispute is about more than one company’s paperwork. The FTC’s consent orders carry enforcement tools—document demands and independent audits—that agencies rely on to verify compliance without repeated litigation. Advocates argue X’s shift into large-scale AI training, combined with prior leaks and allegations of improper data access, increases the potential for consumer harm. Stripping the agency of those tools, they warn, would reduce deterrence against repeat privacy violations.

What to watch

The immediate signal is the July 2 public-comment deadline and how the FTC responds to the coalition of 15 privacy and consumer groups and William Barr’s opposing submission. Observers will also watch the status of the GDPR investigation into X’s European data collection and any public findings tied to the Grok lawsuit from the three plaintiffs. X did not provide a comment in response to outreach.