X Corp. asks court to terminate Twitter’s privacy settlement with FTC

Enlarge / Elon Musk arrives for the 2022 Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 2, 2022, in New York. (credit: Getty Images | Angela Weiss)

Elon Musk is trying to avoid a deposition with the Federal Trade Commission and wants a court to terminate or modify a privacy settlement that Twitter and the FTC agreed to last year before Musk bought the company. The May 2022 settlement lets the FTC monitor and enforce Twitter's compliance, and Twitter claims the US agency became overly aggressive in its investigative demands after Musk bought the firm.

"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," Musk's X Corp. wrote in a motion filed today in US District Court for the Northern District of California.

Republicans in Congress have also been criticizing the FTC's investigation into Twitter, including at a House Judiciary Committee hearing today.