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Twitter takeover by Elon Musk: Patrick Breyer warns against mandatory authentication plans

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Today it became known that Twitter is accepting Elon Musk's takeover bid
for 44 billion dollars. In the run-up, the Tesla boss had announced: "If
our twitter bid succeeds, we will ... authenticate all real humans". MEP
Patrick Breyer (Pirate Party) comments:

"Musk's planned authentication requirement endangers the security of our
personal data. Our identity, private address and private phone number
are not safe in the hands of Twitter, Facebook, Google etc. Experience
shows that it is only a matter of time before personal data is hacked or
leaked and ends up in the hands of criminals.

Abolishing anonymous Twitter accounts would endanger whistleblowers and
human rights defenders as well as women, children, minorities, victims
of abuse and stalking. After all the FBI infamously persecuted Wikileaks
activists using data disclosed by Twitter. Only anonymity effectively
protects us from hacking, threats, bullying, stalking and discrimination
online.

The Twitter takeover is another reason to sign up for privacy-friendly,
decentralized alternative services like Mastodon. NSA and FBI have no
access to European nodes and anonymity is guaranteed."

The EU recently set up its own Mastodon instance called "EU Voice,"
which is currently in pilot operation: https://social.network.europa.eu/

--
Dr. Patrick Breyer
Europaabgeordneter der Piratenpartei
Member of the European Parliament for the German Pirate Party

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