Senator Threatens Elon Musk Over Twitter Chaos: ‘Fix Your Companies. Or Congress Will.’

Markey didn’t take kindly to Musk’s trolling and pointed out some of the many problems his companies are in.

“One of your companies is under an FTC consent decree. Auto safety watchdog NHTSA is investigating another for killing people,” the senator tweeted at Musk on Sunday. “And you’re spending your time picking fights online. Fix your companies. Or Congress will.”

Ouch. What a burn.

Although picking fights online seems to be ingrained in Musk’s DNA, it probably wasn’t a smart move to pick a fight with a senator that happens to sit on a lot of committees that oversee his companies. Markey sits on the Senate’s Commerce, Transportation, and Finance Committee and is part of many subcommittees which oversee Twitter, Tesla, and SpaceX.

Notably, Markey isn’t the only government official paying attention to Musk. Last week, following the resignation of Twitter’s CISO, its chief privacy officer, and its chief compliance officer, the Federal Trade Commission’s members stated that they were tracking the recent developments at Twitter “with deep concern.”

“No CEO or company is above the law, and companies must follow our consent decrees,” an FTC spokesperson said. “Our revised consent order gives us new tools to ensure compliance, and we are prepared to use them.”

Twitter is currently under two FTC consent decrees for violating users’ privacy and security in recent years. In May, the FTC fined the company $150 million for violating a consent decree from 2011 that forbade the company from using information it collected from users in the name of security for advertising purposes. As part of a new deal between Twitter and the FTC, the agency will keep a close eye Twitter’s privacy and security practices for the next 20 years. Twitter’s former head of security alleged in a whistleblower report over the summer that the company maintained lax security policies and failed to protect users’ information.

If Twitter breaches its agreements with the FTC, it risks paying billions in fines.