Twitter held in contempt, fined $350K over Trump data delay
Twitter held in contempt, fined $350K over Trump data delay
Trump accused the DOJ of "secretly attacking" his Twitter account.
Sanctions were applied after the social media platform delayed compliance with a federal search warrant that required Twitter to hand over Donald Trump's Twitter data without telling the former president about the warrant for 180 days.
That's like fining you or I a penny. It's so ridiculously inconsequential to Musk.
If he'd held out one more day it would have been 700k. 2 more days, 1.4M. 3 more, 2.8M.
i.e. Musk caved before it became consequential.
1.4B if he'd waited 2 weeks more. 23.4T (that's Trillion) if he wanted to shield Trump for a month. I'd say it was a heavy fine that worked as intended.
Someone check my math.
Until fines become wealth based, it will always be a poor people tax.
If cash flow is the issue, then start taking stocks.
Or make them recurring fines that grow exponentially each time they are issued until the situation is fixed.
Edit: nvm it sounds like this is exactly what they are doing.
Not just a "poor person tax" but it means that the law just doesn't apply in any meaningful way to the wealthy
Inconsequential for Musk sure, but not Twitter. Twitter is a company that didn't make money, lost half of its ad revenue, can't afford to pay its rent, can't afford to pay its cloud providers, and was saddled with huge debts that have $1b in interest annually. The clock is ticking for Twitter.
I think the issue is it can become failure of compliance and obstruction of justice at some point or can be tried as that. Elon could really get himself fucked if am investigation found members of the company discussion rejection to oblige.
Lol true.
This the top comment on literally every news article about a fine, lol.
Meanwhile, Twitter was late in its attempts to oppose the sanctions formula. The court opinion said that Twitter's counsel "belatedly" pointed out that "roughly one month of noncompliance" would have "required Twitter to pay a sanction greater than 'the entire world's gross domestic product.'"
PalpatineDewIt.jpg
Day 7: 6,350,000
Day 14: 819,150,000
Day 21: 104,857,550,000
Day 28: 13,421,772,750,000
Day 30: 53,687,091,150,000
A fun fine from the judge.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
At first, Twitter resisted producing Trump's data and argued that the government's nondisclosure order violated the First Amendment and the Stored Communications Act.
However, US circuit judge Florence Pan wrote that the court was largely unpersuaded by Twitter's arguments, mostly because the government's interest in Trump's data as part of its ongoing January 6 investigation was "unquestionably compelling."
The government then took the extra step to apply for a nondisclosure order, which was granted because "the district court found that there were 'reasonable grounds to believe' that disclosing the warrant to former President Trump 'would seriously jeopardize the ongoing investigation' by giving him 'an opportunity to destroy evidence, change patterns of behavior, [or] notify confederates.'"
The court checked with Twitter and confirmed that it was capable of meeting a rapid deadline and turning over the data by 5:00 pm that evening.
The court rejected Twitter's "good faith" arguments, mainly because the company blew past the original deadline and repeatedly failed to raise concerns at earlier opportunities.
While Twitter appealed the decision, the company "paid the $350,000 sanction into an escrow account maintained by the district court clerk's office."
I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Good bot.
Hmmmm, yes, we got rid of Nixon by complying with the first amendment act. At this point Elon is just a closeted far righter whos just scared to make it public.
Ummm... Has he not been making it public? He hasn't seemed too subtle to me
That's such an ancient phone on the thumbnail that it couldn't even run Twitter.
Galaxy S3, right? That was my first smartphone! It looked pretty good in white (at the time).
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Apparently trump actually used this phone till 2020 to use twitter
The government immediately tried to serve Twitter with the search warrant—which required Trump's data to be shared within 10 days—but the website where Twitter gathers legal requests was "inoperative."
Did they auto-reply to the request with a poop emoji?
But with Musk's wealth compared to the average white collar workers wealth, isn't that like 35 bucks?
More like three fiddy
Does this include DMs?
I feel like it should be noted that Twitter didn't have any objections at all to handing over all of Trump's data. Thier only issue was with not telling him about it.
If you read the article that was one of several things they threw out there to excuse their consistently delaying/not complying. The courts told them repeatedly that their opinions on the matter were wrong and they kept delaying over and over again.
I mean come on:
"Twitter contends that it 'substantially complied with the [w]arrant' because 'there was nothing [it] could have done to comply faster' after the court issued the February 7 order," the court document said.
The court rejected Twitter's "good faith" arguments, mainly because the company blew past the original deadline and repeatedly failed to raise concerns at earlier opportunities.Twitter continued challenging the nondisclosure order and the sanctions, but the court rejected most of its arguments and ultimately affirmed the contempt sanctions, issuing its opinion on July 18.
This nonsense went on for months.
Comply, Elmo, means comply. Like, right now. There isn't a separate meaning for the very rich.
Justice system finally getting around to expressing what we're all feeling for TwitX.
Elon Musk isn't paying his ex employees severance, his rent on multiple continents, and he's not going to be paying this fine, or any others that they levy, until they find him personally responsible, which will take years, and so the corporate stonewalling of government continues unabated with only the future of the republic at risk
Read the bot at least. Twitter paid the fine into an escrow account
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It wasn't meant to punish. It was meant to compel, and it worked.
The fine was $50K per day, and by the time they complied it had gotten to $350K. They then went to court to fight the fine, and have not definitively lost.