The last time I saw accused Saudi spy Ahmad Abouammo, he was holding us up from dinner because he wanted to FaceTime his kid before leaving Twitter's head office in San Francisco.

Tucked away in a corner with only his unruly hair visible from behind his standard issue MacBook, he'd laugh and joke as he worked his way through the data used to help Twitter's media partnership team identify influential Twitter users in the news industry and government.

I did the same job from 2013 to 2016, mostly focused on Canada and other Western democracies such as the United States and the United Kingdom. From Ottawa to Edinburgh, from Los Angeles to Seoul, I met with government officials, leaders, editors and journalists.

Our end goal? Make contact with influencers to ensure they kept tweeting.

His goals appear to have been different - he's accused of selling data to the Saudi Arabian government. It's no small charge - he's staring down the possibility of a 20-year prison sentence for spying on behalf of the Saudis.

And while social media users have become increasingly wary of the way their data is used by social media companies - my Instagram ads seem to know exactly what I was talking about the day before - the data he's accused of sharing was easily accessible to hundreds of employees.

Some of it was relatively benign - account creation dates, number of tweets per day, most popular tweets. Some of it was more potentially damaging for someone trying to keep their identity secret - such as the IP addresses which could help anyone narrow down a tweeter's location.

Abouammo and another Twitter employee allegedly pulled up information on thousands of accounts, including a journalist who was close to the murdered Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. For a company that values privacy and defends account anonymity as a necessary veil for vulnerable users who want to tell their stories or engage with the world when restrictive regimes would rather they remain silent, the charges must feel like a kick in the gut.

There are many conversations about the power these companies have to influence elections, to topple governments, to bring in massive social reform and allow the disadvantaged to rise up and have a voice. The conversations are about social media writ large, but to date haven't focused on how the companies outreach efforts can also actively shape the public discourse.

Twitter's media partnership teams - Facebook has similar operatives - wield a tremendous amount of power within their platforms.

The act of verifying a Twitter account alone carries huge consequences.

While a blue check mark may be a slight ego boost for a Western journalist, the marker also lends credibility and influence to activists and politicians desperate to increase their reach and amplify their messages. While there was a very robust procedure behind verification that involved forms and credentials, anyone on the company's media team could sidestep the formal process and verify someone with a click of a button.

Another way the media team could influence the platform was by building lists of "recommended follows." Dozens of hand-picked accounts would be added to a list, and new users would be prompted to follow these accounts. It was a good way to promote news providers and political leaders and helped new users curate their feeds.

But, you can see how it could be used to ensure certain voices were amplified and others were muffled (the system is now largely automated).

If you've ever wondered why so many Twitter employees have so many followers, it was common for them to add each other to these lists in the company's early days. It's a benign example - but you can see the danger.

We could also deactivate accounts, though I never did. Remember when Donald Trump went missing for a few hours because a rogue Twitter employee decided he was tired of reading his Tweets?

The charges against the former employees are a reminder that every move we make on social media has consequences. Data you don't value today could be hard currency tomorrow, and the social landscape is forever shifting.

And while the companies may do as much as they can to protect user data, the question always remains: Who watches the watchmen?

In this case, the answer was the Saudis.

The next time, it could be your own government.

We should probably post accordingly.

Steve Ladurantaye is the head of news and current affairs for STV.