1 yr. ago • 98%

Twitter held in contempt, fined $350K over Trump data delay

arstechnica.com 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.

88 comments

That's like fining you or I a penny. It's so ridiculously inconsequential to Musk.

89
- 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.
  
  57
  
  I checked your math. It's pretty terrible, my friend.
  
  39
- Until fines become wealth based, it will always be a poor people tax.
  
  If cash flow is the issue, then start taking stocks.
  
  50
  
  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.
  
  8
  
  Not just a "poor person tax" but it means that the law just doesn't apply in any meaningful way to the wealthy
  
  3
- 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.
  
  26
- 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.
  
  5
- Lol true.
  
  3
- This the top comment on literally every news article about a fine, lol.
  
  0
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

59
- 350k is a slap. Criminal charges should be made agaist leaders who ordered the delays.
  
  73
  
  Sure would be nice if some rich criminals went to jail instead of a life without repercussions of any kind
  
  43
  
  It was doubling every day. They were scared of day 15 where it would've been 780mil for the day and over 1.562billion total.
  
  Every day doubling is a really good consequence, the fact that it only took twitter 3 days to comply once the penalty started actually hitting should confirm that
  
  33
  
  Can we send Twitter to prison?
  
  15
  
  Bro, Elon gutted Twitter. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't have the right people to get this information. I wonder if it sat in a mailbox for a day before they even had someone look at it.
  
  Twitter isn't a well run company anymore. This could be pure incompetence.
  
  5
- Elon is bleeding millions a day at this point - he won’t even know that this 350k ever existed or what it was for.
  
  19
  
  100% this. This fine should be increased hundred fold at the very least. In the real world someone would be held in contempt of court and jailed. Laws for the common man and piddly fines for the wealthy parasites of the world.
  
  7
- Ugh please leave the pointless predictable pithy platitudes at Reddit
  
  15
  
  ^ This
  
  0
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!

59
- Good bot.
  
  9
- 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.
  
  2
  
  Ummm... Has he not been making it public? He hasn't seemed too subtle to me
  
  2
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

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- "But your honor, if we don't comply with your order it'll cost insane amounts of money!"
  
  "Damn it's almost like I want you to comply"
  
  45
- 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.
  
  12
- https://tenor.com/view/oh-no-anyway-gif-19022587
  
  5
Permanently Deleted

28
- 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.
  
  38
  
  Just for clarification purposes, its 50k per day, doubling every day of noncompliance. So day 1 is 50k, day 2 is an additional 100k, and day 3 is an additional 200k. 3 days = 350k. I agree that it's not enough, but if they dug their heels in, it would grow really high, really fast, so it was a pretty effective fine.
  
  80
- It wasn't meant to punish. It was meant to compel, and it worked.
  
  14
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?

27
I find Twitter contemptible, where's my money?

21
Elon is a Trump level business leader 🙄

20
- All that money he saved by laying off staff now wasted on fines.
  
  12
But with Musk's wealth compared to the average white collar workers wealth, isn't that like 35 bucks?

18
- The average net worth in the US is $121k. Elon Musk’s net worth is $231B, or about 1.9M times the average. A $350K fine for Musk would equate to about 18 cents for the average American.
  
  43
- More like three fiddy
  
  3
That's such an ancient phone on the thumbnail that it couldn't even run Twitter.

17
- Galaxy S3, right? That was my first smartphone! It looked pretty good in white (at the time).
  
  9
  
  Permanently Deleted
  
  7
- Apparently trump actually used this phone till 2020 to use twitter
  
  1
The real question is, what were they doing with the data during that time? Did some it disappear?

14
- People on Twitter are saying they noticed his likes are gone. People have screenshots of everything he did on that site so wonder if Elon is gonna get in a fuckton of trouble.
  
  1
  
  Billionaires never seem to get in trouble, so I won't hold my breath.
  
  There's a bunch of information that's essentially public, which can be pieced back together. My concerned would be the potentially damning private messages and drafts that cannot be recovered.
  
  2
- It was 3 days. They were probably waiting for someone to get around to collating it. You act like that should be easy.
  
  -42
  
  The warrant was first served in January. They could have gotten it done in time but dragged their feet until the last second.
  
  31
  
  A company that specializes in sorting data should have an easy time with a request like this.
  
  26
  
  It takes less than 30 minutes to write that sql query, no shot someone needs to spend 3 days “collating”.
  
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  Permanently Deleted
  
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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.

12
- Thier only issue was with not telling him about it.
  
  That was a legal tactic. It doesn't mean that was their actual concern. It means it was the best counterargument they could come up with.
  
  42
- 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.
  
  28
  
  To avoid a fine, all they had to do was tell the court they needed more time before the deadline*
  
  *Because Space Karen fired all the people who knew how to look this up
  
  17
Justice system finally getting around to expressing what we're all feeling for TwitX.

6
- I prefer Xitter, pronounced like "ZITTER".
  
  1
  
  “Shitter”
  
  5
…per day, or is this another “shucks Mr. Billionaire, I guess I gotta fine you something” punishment?

5
- It was $50K per day. Then they complied, but still owed $350K. Then Twitter appealed the fine, and have now spent more money fighting the fine, than just paying it, and still have to pay it because they lost on appeal.
  
  13
  
  Lawyers got paid, so that’s cool for them I suppose.
  
  7
  
  No, it was $50k doubling every day. So day 2 it was $100k and day 3 it was $200k bringing it up to $350k. In a month, it would have been trillions.
  
  2
- The judge laid out a formula for "sanctions that would accrue at a geometric rate: $50,000 per day, to double every day that Twitter did not comply." At that time, Twitter did not object to the sanctions formula
  
  11
Comply, Elmo, means comply. Like, right now. There isn't a separate meaning for the very rich.

4
Does this include DMs?

3
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

2
- They already paid the fine. It's held in an escrow account while they appeal it.
  
  5
- Read the bot at least. Twitter paid the fine into an escrow account
  
  4

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