Now I'm genuinely curious if that constitutes a violation of GDPR (if Twitter was European) or CA's regulations (but Twitter is in CA, so maybe?)

Corporate communication is corporate property and fully accessible as it pertains to investigations of corporate wrong-doing. You can be certain Twitter's new legal team is looking at everything. The issue is whether the persons in question were communicating in the capacity of working for Twitter. It's very clear that they were, and it wouldn't be at all surprising if the clown show at Twitter did all manner of unethical things in conflicting with Musk.

> Corporate communication is corporate property and fully accessible as it pertains to investigations of corporate wrong-doing.

I guess it depends on your definition of corporate wrong-doing. If Elon just looked for all posts that include his name and he's firing everyone who was critical of him, that might stretch the definition for most people. That could even cross over into creepy big-brother like oversight and might dissuade people from working at Elon led companies (or maybe attracts people who want him searching their private messages for references to him).

Elon bought the company. That includes internal DMs between managers who violated their training and admitted breaking the law.

Everyone who works for Elon, and half the people who don't, how heanages his companies.

You know he's deep into all his Ex's twitter DMS. If I were withing a few hops of elon and I used twitter DMs I'd be nervous.