A spokesperson said the company has never hidden the fact that it does business with Chinese commercial entities. Twitter declined to comment on internal discussions and its sales performance in China. The people with knowledge of the matter declined to be identified citing confidentiality agreements. Twitter's sales of overseas ads to Chinese clients are estimated to be in the "hundreds of millions of dollars a year", the people said, the majority coming from these companies. Gaming, e-commerce, and tech firms in China are also key Twitter customers, according to two sources. Two people with knowledge of the matter said Twitter's China sales team actively courted local governments in the country as part of its global strategy to compete for ad business with tech rivals like Alphabet's Google and Meta's Facebook. It would be problematic if we lost that revenue stream so figure out a way to make people comfortable with it,” Zatko told senators. The former executive told the hearing that Twitter employees had been "disturbed" that, despite being banned in China, the platform was accepting money from organizations associated with the Chinese government, resulting in an "internal conundrum". Zatko said during the hearing the agent was alleged to be from China's Ministry of State Security, the country's main espionage agency. Senator Chuck Grassley said that Zatko's disclosures to the committee alleged that the FBI notified Twitter of at least one Chinese agent in the company.
Zatko, through an attorney, earlier declined to comment.ĭuring the hearing, U.S. He referenced this Reuters story when testifying about how the FBI told Twitter there was a Chinese agent working at the company.Īmong other claims, his 84-page complaint alleged "Twitter executives knew that accepting Chinese money risked endangering users in China," and that "Mr Zatko was told that Twitter was too dependent upon the revenue stream at this point to do anything other than attempt to increase it." Reuters could not independently verify the claims. Senate Judiciary committee held a hearing to consider a whistleblower complaint filed by Twitter's former security chief Peiter "Mudge" Zatko.
Twitter's dealings in China came to the fore on Tuesday when the U.S. It comes with the company embroiled in a legal battle with Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk, who is attempting to back out of his unsolicited $44 billion offer to buy Twitter.įour sources told Reuters operations in China became a source of internal clashes between teams keen to maximise the sales opportunity and others concerned at the optics of doing business with state-affiliated entities at a time of growing tension between Beijing and Washington. The review shows for the first time just how important China has become for Twitter, under pressure from investors to meet growth targets as its U.S. The promotions, often outsourced by local governments to state media, pitched local attractions, as well as cultural and economic achievements, to an international audience, and were permitted under an exemption to Twitter's ban on state-media advertising.
0 kommentar(er)
