Special counsel Jack Smith’s team obtained a search warrant in January for records related to former President Donald Trump’s Twitter account, and a judge levied a $350,000 fine on the company for missing the deadline to comply, according to court documents released Wednesday.

  • Zombiepirate@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Important to note that these fines were to enforce compliance, and they worked.

    Twitter finally fulfilled their legal obligation before the cost really balooned, which was the entire point of the fine.

      • wavebeam@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Some more for ya: The fine started as a 50k fine, but then doubled every day it wasn’t paid. So it only took them a few days to actually pay it to stop the fines.

        • pitninja@lemmy.pit.ninja
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          1 year ago

          That’s good to know! I was initially confused about how you double a $50k amount and get to $350k, but I’m guessing it works as an additional fine every day and is like:

          • Day 0: No fine
          • Day 1: Add $50k
          • Day 2: Add $100k
          • Day 3: Add $200k
        • dan1101@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Now that is more compelling than a $350,000 slap on the wrist. That was a rapidly approaching trainwreck they were naturally interested in avoiding.

          • TommySalami@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Which is honestly how I’m starting to feel all corporate fines should be. You want to slow walk a solution or request for a few days to feel big, you can do that for a few hundred thousand or more (that’s free money baby, and it should be put towards the public). You want to actually play hard ball? You will be staring down the barrel of complete financial ruin.

            Now if we can just add more opportunity for criminal charges I’ll be happy.

    • Badass_panda@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Iirc this fine started at $50k and each day of noncompliance. Another fine 2x the size of the prior days fine was added.

      So noncompliance for another day would have cost another $400k, then $800k, then $1.6m, and so on. By day 30 of noncompliance, the fine would be over $5 billion.

      • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        Why the minimum amount?

        If a homeless person on the street is fined 100€, they won’t be able to afford it.

        No, just keep it a percentage and keep it simple, or loopholes will be found.

        • whatisallthis@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Because if there was no minimum I’d just declare bankruptcy and commit crimes for free all day

            • whatisallthis@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              What do you mean. I’d only have to declare bankruptcy once. Then commit some big crime for free. Then I’d go back to my normal life.

              • _haha_oh_wow_@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                I believe you have some serious misconceptions about how bankruptcy works but I don’t really have the time to explain it to you. The gist of it is that it’s not that simple and is certainly not guaranteed for everybody.

          • dangblingus@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            And never ever again be offered any kind of credit product. You might not even be allowed to open a bank account or invest money. Say goodbye to ever having the THOUGHT of owning a house.

  • alienanimals@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This is essentially $350,000 that Elon is paying to stay in the daily news cycle.

    Stop upvoting Elon garbage and doing the billionaire’s work for him.

    • Quasari@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      It was 50k doubling each day. So 50k + 100k + 200k for 3 days, if they had let it keep going it would of hurt a lot. This type of fine works.

      At 10 days would be 51 million, after 20 would be 52 billion dollars. So, they have a compelling reason to comply with haste.

  • Rapidcreek@reddthat.com
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    1 year ago

    This is the reason there are legal compliance officers in communication companies. Elmo fired his. Good that they compiled before the penalties started to escalate.

    • ForestOrca@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Umm, no X paid way too small of a fine, AND still had to comply with the court’s order. Could have done it without the hassle, but chose to cost X’s bottom line.

      • Bwaz@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        But Elon probably routinely has lost that much most times he’s posted dumb stuff on Twitter himself. Hard to meaningfully fine a multi billionaire. But apparently he caved before the government got to really trying.

    • dangblingus@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Elon is worth over $200B. He has many people on his team that advise him about his wealth and growing it. It’s highly unlikely he bumbled his way into $22B of Saudi Arabian money, accidentally withdrew another $22B from his chequing account, accidentally fired over half of the staff at twitter, accidentally changed the name to the asinine “X”, and accidentally made the company hemorrhage valuation. It was a calculated move. The only thing he wasn’t prepared for was the price tag because he couldn’t stop running his mouth. SA invested $22B into the acquisition because they wanted Musk to destroy the platform. Arab Spring and all that. Do you think that SA invested that kind of money directly because they thought they would see ROI? Hardly.

      • _haha_oh_wow_@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        IDK, seems like you’re giving him too much credit but that does sound pretty plausible. Would be pretty short-sighted of SA though, it’s not like people can’t use other apps.