[dub]

> Anything that isn't in the "happy path" of the AdsUI probably gets handled by some engineer making some API calls to a prod API

Prior to going private, Twitter would have had recurring Sarbanes-Oxley audits. Auditors understand the need for occasional emergency break-glass methods of making manual database queries or API calls, but they are less tolerant about that being a normal way of operating.

Plus, if you use emergency access often you'll eventually waste more time explaining each individual access to auditors at the end of the quarter than it would have taken to just implement a UI for the feature in a code-reviewed and audited internal admin console or user-facing UI.