Elon Musk fires Twitter's accessibility team

[kestrell]

Kes: Now that Twitter is used as an everyday tool for government, educational, and research use, I wonder if it falls under the ADA? I suppose we'll find out when the blizzard of blind lawyers descends upon Musk's head and files a law suit through the DOJ.

The following tweets are from Girard K. Cohen, who identifies himself as the former engineering manager of Twitter’s accessibility experience team.
Original source
https://twitter.com/gerardkcohen/status/1588584479072714752

I am officially no longer the Engineering Manager for the Accessibility Experience Team at Twitter. I have words.
As hard as things were they would have been impossible without our beloved Nightingales, accessibility champions that helped expand our reach.
Please, show them some grace. We heard & listened to all of you, good & bad, & we felt it all genuinely. I hate
the way this ended, but I’m so very proud of everything we were able to accomplish together. Now I have other places to help make accessible 💪🏽
We also got to work with qualityisking taking care of us as our tester. Peter was extremely thorough and his
reports were beautiful.
So, the Accessibility Experience Team at Twitter is no longer. We had so much more to do, but we worked hard! There aren't
very many people that have had the opportunity to make such an important global platform like Twitter accessible, but we understood the mission.

Kes: Also, from Wired:

Elon Musk Has Fired Twitter’s ‘Ethical AI’ Team
https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-ethical-ai-team/

Comments

[dewline]

Musk rejected the fact that the mission is of value.

We know why, I suspect.

If you are part of a "movement" planning to void the ADA - soon - why maintain such a team?

[cvirtue]

Argh.

[cvirtue]

FTC starts paying attention (although not to accessibility)

Washington Post:
“Several top privacy and security executives resigned from Twitter on Thursday, citing fears over the risks from Elon Musk’s leadership in a stunning exodus that prompted federal regulators to warn they might step in.
 Chief Information Security Officer Lea Kissner tweeted that they had made the “hard decision” to resign, and the company’s chief privacy officer and chief compliance officer also quit, according to screenshots of an employee’s internal Slack message shared with The Washington Post.
One current Twitter employee said several other members of the site’s privacy and security unit also had resigned

The departures prompted a rare warning from the Federal Trade Commission, which has emerged as the government’s top Silicon Valley watchdog. It marked the second time in two days that a federal official has expressed concern about the chaotic developments at the company, coming less than 24 hours after President Biden said Musk’s relationships with other countries deserved scrutiny.
 The agency said that it was “tracking the developments at Twitter with deep concern” and that it was prepared to take action to ensure the company was complying with a settlement known as a consent order, which requires Twitter to comply with certain privacy and security requirements because of allegations of past data misuse.”