The social media company formerly known as Twitter has been accused in a revised civil US lawsuit of helping Saudi Arabia commit grave human rights abuses against its users, including by disclosing confidential user data at the request of Saudi authorities at a much higher rate than it has for the US, UK or Canada.
The lawsuit was brought last May against X, as Twitter is now known, by Areej al-Sadhan, the sister of a Saudi aid worker who was forcibly disappeared and then later sentenced to 20 years in jail.
It centers on the events surrounding the infiltration of the California company by three Saudi agents, two of whom were posing as Twitter employees in 2014 and 2015, which ultimately led to the arrest of al-Sadhan’s brother, Abdulrahman, and the exposure of the identity of thousands of anonymous Twitter users, some of whom were later reportedly detained and tortured as part of the government’s crackdown on dissent.
Lawyers for Al-Sadhan updated their claim last week to include new allegations about how Twitter, under the leadership of then chief executive Jack Dorsey, willfully ignored or had knowledge of the Saudi government’s campaign to ferret out critics but – because of financial considerations and efforts to keep close ties to the Saudi government, a top investor in the company – provided assistance to the kingdom.
The new lawsuit details how X had originally been seen seen as a critical vehicle for democratic movements during the Arab spring, and therefore became a source of concern for the Saudi government as early as 2013.
The new legal filing comes days after Human Rights Watch condemned a Saudi court for sentencing a man to death based solely on his Twitter and YouTube activity, which it called an “escalation” of the government’s crackdown on freedom of expression.
The convicted man, Muhammad al-Ghamdi, 54, is the brother of a Saudi scholar and government critic living in exile in the UK. Saudi court records examined by HRW showed that al-Ghamdi was accused of having two accounts, which had a total of 10 followers combined. Both accounts had fewer than 1,000 tweets combined, and contained retweets of well-known critics of the government.
The Saudi crackdown can be traced back to December 2014, as Ahmad Abouammo – who was later convicted in the US for secretly acting as a Saudi agent and lying to the FBI – began accessing and sending confidential user data to Saudi Arabian officials. In the new lawsuit, it is claimed that he sent a message to Saud al-Qahtani, a close aide to Mohammed bin Salman, via the social media company’s messaging system, saying “proactively and reactively we will delete evil, my brother”. It was a reference, the lawsuit claims, to the identification and harming of perceived Saudi dissidents who were using the platform. Al-Qahtani was later accused by the US of being a mastermind behind the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
“Twitter was either aware of this message – brazenly sent on its own platform – or was deliberately ignorant to it,” the revised lawsuit states.
Twitter, now X, does not respond to questions from the press.
The Guardian contacted the company lawyer in the case, Ben Berkowitz of Keker, Van Nest & Peters, but did not receive a response. The Guardian also contacted Dorsey’s new company, Block, Inc, to request a comment from the former Twitter chief executive, but did not receive a response.
After Abouammo resigned in May 2015, he continued to contact Twitter to field requests he was receiving from Bader al-Asaker, a senior aide of Mohammed bin Salman, for the identity of confidential users. He made clear to the company, the lawsuit alleges, that the requests were on behalf of his “old partners in the Saudi government”.
The lawsuit also alleges that Twitter had “ample notice” of security risks to internal personal data, and that there was a threat of insiders illegally accessing it, based on public reporting at the time.
Twitter “did not simply ignore all these red flags … it was aware of the malign campaign”, the lawsuit claims.
On 28 September 2015, Twitter received a complaint from a Saudi user that their accounts had been compromised. But, the lawsuit alleges, the company did not act to bar one of the Saudis who was later accused – Ali Hamad Alzabarah – from having access to confidential user data, even though he had accessed the user’s account previously.
Saudi Arabian authorities, the lawsuit alleges, would formally follow up with Twitter once it received confidential user data from its agents working inside the company, by filing so-called EDRs – or emergency disclosure requests – in order to obtain documentation that confirmed a user’s identity, which it would then use in court. Often those EDRs were approved on the same day.
In May 2015, when two Twitter users tweeted about the kingdom in a way that al-Asaker found objectionable, Albabarah accessed the users’ data within hours. EDRs about the users were then sent, and automatically approved by Twitter, the lawsuit alleges.
Between July and December 2015, Twitter granted the kingdom information requests “significantly more often” than most other countries at that time, including Canada, the UK, Australia and Spain, the lawsuit alleges.
On 5 November 2015, just days before Twitter was confronted by the FBI about its concerns about a Saudi infiltration of the company, it promoted Alzabarah – now a fugitive living in Saudi. In response, Alzabarah sent his Saudi government contact, al-Asaker, a note, conveying his “unimaginable happiness” for the promotion. The note, the lawsuit claims, is evidence that Alzabarah believed al-Asaker had “arranged” or “been influential” in connection to the promotion.
Once Twitter was made aware of the FBI’s concerns, it put Alzabarah on leave and confiscated his laptop, but not his phone, which he has used extensively to contact his Saudi state contacts. Twitter, the lawsuit alleges, “had every reason to expect that Alzabarah would immediately flee to Saudi Arabia, which is exactly what he did”.
The US attorney’s office in San Francisco, which handled the case, did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment on the company’s handling of the matter.
Twitter would later notify users who had been exposed, telling them their data “may” have been targeted, but did not provide more specific information about the scale or certainty that the breach had, in fact, occurred.
By “failing to give this crucial information, Twitter put thousands of Twitter users at risk”, the lawsuit alleges, claiming that some may have had time to escape the kingdom had they understood the risk. Even once Twitter was aware of the breach, it continued to meet and strategize with Saudi Arabia as one of its vital partners in the region. Dorsey met with bin Salman about six months after the company was made aware of the issue by the FBI, and the two discussed how to “train and qualify Saudi cadres”.
“We believe in Areej’s case and we will zealously prosecute it – but what she wants most is for Saudi Arabia to simply release her brother and let him re-join his family in the United States,” said Jim Walden, a lawyer representing Al-Sadhan from Walden Macht & Haran. “Were that to happen, she and Abdulrahman would gratefully resume their lives and leave justice in God’s hand.”
Bjørn Gulden, chief executive of Adidas, has lamented the end of the company’s lucrative partnership with Kanye West, saying, “I don’t think he meant what he said,” regarding the rapper’s antisemitic comments in October 2022.
West, who has changed his name to Ye, wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that he was “going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE … You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda”. On Instagram, he posted a screenshot of a conversation with Diddy, where he wrote: “Ima use you as an example to show the Jewish people that told you to call me that no one can threaten or influence me.” Ye had caused further anger earlier that month by including T-shirts with the slogan White Lives Matter in a Yeezy fashion show in Paris.
Later in October, Adidas ended a creative partnership with Ye that had begun in 2015, saying his comments were “unacceptable, hateful and dangerous, and they violate the company’s values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect and fairness”.
In December, Ye caused further outrage after posting an image of a swastika blended with the Star of David to X and praising Adolf Hitler and Nazis in an interview with Infowars host Alex Jones. “I see good things about Hitler,” said Ye. “Every human being has something of value that they brought to the table, especially Hitler … [Nazis] did good things too.” He added: “There’s a lot of things that I love about Hitler.”
Now, speaking on the Norwegian podcast In Good Company, Gulden elaborated on the rapper’s departure, prior to Gulden’s tenure which began in January after he left Puma.
“I think Kanye West is one of the most creative people in the world,” he said. “Both in music and what I call street culture. So he’s extremely creative and has together with Adi created a Yeezy line that was very successful. And then, as creative people, he did some statements, which wasn’t that good. And that caused Adi to break the contract and withdraw the product. Very unfortunate, because I don’t think he meant what he said and I don’t think he’s a bad person – it just came across that way.
“That meant we lost that business. One of the most successful collabs in history – very sad. But again, when you work with third parties, that could happen. It’s part of the game. That can happen with an athlete, it can happen with an entertainer. It’s part of the business.”
With its futurist silhouettes and pop-cultural heft, Yeezy became a successful brand for Adidas, generating £1.3bn in 2021, 7% of Adidas’s overall annual revenue. It was a major source of income for Ye, who took a reported 11% royalty cut.
After cutting ties with Ye, Adidas was lumbered with more than £1bn of unsold Yeezy stock. In May, Gulden announced plans for the stock, saying it would be sold but with a “significant amount” of proceeds handed to groups which combat hate speech, including the Anti-Defamation League, the Philonise & Keeta Floyd Institute for Social Change (run by the family of George Floyd) and the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism. At the time, Gulden said: “There is no place in sport or society for hate of any kind and we remain committed to fighting against it.”
Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League who had condemned Ye as a “vicious antisemite” who “put Jews in danger”, welcomed the move as “a thoughtful and caring resolution”.
But the musician will still earn his share of profits, which has caused some consternation. Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said Adidas’s donations were “highly commendable … [but] the fact that Kanye West would profit financially from the sale is highly problematic”.
The end of the Yeezy product line contributed to a £350m drop in sales for Adidas in the first quarter of 2023, in a year-on-year comparison with 2022. Announcing those results in May, Gulden said: “2023 will be a bumpy year with disappointing numbers … the loss of Yeezy [is] of course hurting us.”
Ye, who has hinted at a 2024 presidential run to follow his 2020 campaign, has kept a relatively low profile since his antisemitic comments, though has remained a tabloid fixation for his relationship with girlfriend and co-worker Bianca Censori. The couple were pictured together at London fashion week last week.
FTX is suing the parents of Sam Bankman-Fried, two longtime Stanford Law School professors, alleging that the couple inappropriately used company funds to enrich themselves through gifts and donations.
The cryptocurrency company, now operating under CEO John Jay Ray III, an expert in helping companies recover after bankruptcy, claims Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried received funds from their son’s company in the form of gifts and donations to specific causes.
The lawsuit is the company’s first legal pursuit against Bankman-Fried’s parents for their role in the company.
“As Bankman-Fried’s parents, Bankman and Fried exploited their access and influence within the FTX enterprise to enrich themselves, directly and indirectly, by millions of dollars,” the lawsuit said. “Despite presenting itself to investors and the public as a sophisticated group of cryptocurrency exchanges and businesses, the FTX Group was a self-described ‘family business’.”
The lawsuit said Bankman and Fried received a $10m gift and a $16.4m luxury home in the Bahamas, where FTX was based, “despite knowing or blatantly ignoring that the FTX Group was insolvent or on the brink of insolvency”. The couple also advocated for “tens of millions of dollars” of company funds to be used for political and charitable contributions, including to Stanford and to Mind the Gap, a leftwing super political action committee (Pac) co-founded by Fried.
The couple “either knew – or ignored bright red flags revealing – that their son, Bankman-Fried, and other FTX Insiders were orchestrating a vast fraudulent scheme to profit and promote their personal and charitable agendas at [the company’s] expense”.
The company is also accusing Bankman of trying to help cover up FTX mismanagement and fraud, saying that he “portrayed himself as the proverbial adult in the room – and was uniquely positioned to fulfill that role – as he worked alongside inexperienced fellow executive officers, directors and and managers responsible for safeguarding billions of dollars.”
The couple has not publicly commented on the lawsuit, though a spokesperson last year told the New York Times that Bankman had worked for FTX for 11 months and said “most of his time was spent identifying worthy health-related charities”.
Bankman-Fried faces seven counts of federal charges, including charges of fraud and money laundering. After spending months under house arrest in his parents’ home in Palo Alto, Bankman-Fried was sent to a Brooklyn jail in August after a judge ruled he had tampered with witnesses. The former FTX CEO had leaked to the New York Times personal writings of Caroline Ellison, Bankman-Fried former romantic partner and former chief executive of Alameda Research, the hedge fund that was connected to FTX.
Shares in online grocery delivery business Instacart jumped 43% in its Nasdaq trading debut on Tuesday.
While shares dropped back in later trading, ending the day up just over 12%, the price pop was the second successful initial public offering (IPO) in a week following the sale of British microchip designer Arm.
Instacart’s shares started trading at $30 and closed at $34.23, valuing the company at about $11bn. That’s about half the valuation it received from investors last March.
Instacart’s core business is to send couriers to grocery stores to pick out orders and deliver them to homes, but in recent years it has expanded into advertising and technology services, including artificial intelligence operations.
Instacart executives pitched the offering as an opportunity to get in on a revolution in the grocery business that, they said, had notably lagged in developing technologies to meet shifting consumer habits.
US consumers are ordering more groceries online than they did before the pandemic, when demand for home delivery soared, but they are doing so less often. Instacart has only recently started making profits after years of losses and faces strong competition from Uber and DoorDash.
Instacart’s share offering was backed by big investors, including PepsiCo, Norway’s Norges Bank and Sequoia Capital.
Among the winners from the IPO is Apoorva Mehta, 37, who co-founded the company in 2012 and stepped down as CEO in 2021. Mehta’s 10% stake in the firm is now valued at $1.3bn.
Instacart currently has more than 3,000 employees and about 600,000 “shoppers” – independent contractors who pick up orders. The company has said it will pay bonuses to shoppers who have delivered at least 5,000 orders and a $20,000 bonus to those who have delivered at least 15,000 orders.
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