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.
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!
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?
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.’”
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