Brazil’s Supreme Court has declared that Twitter (X) cannot resume operations in the country because the fines imposed on the social network were paid to the wrong bank.
As a reminder, Twitter (and later Starlink) was banned in Brazil for not complying with hate speech mitigation conditions and for not having legal representation in the country. Business was suspended in August. The country’s Supreme Court also gave Apple and Google five days to remove the apps from their stores and fined them 50,000 reais (approximately $8,900) for using the social network through a VPN. imposed.
Twitter’s Elon Musk immediately called the judge a phony and shut down all of his offices in the country. However, after a while, he appears to have decided to make a concession and agree to the court’s terms. Some accounts were blocked and the bank tried to pay a $5 million fine, but Reuters reported that it had the wrong bank name. .
The court has now ordered Twitter to correct the error, after which company representatives must consult with local attorneys general. No date has been announced for when the social network will resume operations.
Remember, Elon Musk bought Twitter for a whopping $44 billion in 2022, launching a grand undertaking to transform the social network into a new “free speech” service called X. At the same time, not all of Twitter’s relaunch efforts have been successful. : Some new features worked with errors, and the launch of new subscriptions led to the proliferation of fake news and trolls on social media. And the billionaire’s own statements, often highly controversial, did not appeal to many advertisers. Last year, Twitter lost Apple and Disney (Musk was subsequently accused of intentional boycotts and was “sent to hell”).
All these events also affected the company’s earnings, especially its value. It’s now down a devastating 79% (or up to $44 billion), considering the original estimate of $44 billion that Musk gave at the time of the deal. $9.4 billion), based on the latest data from Fidelity (the company that helped acquire Elon).