Brazil says Twitter lawyers paid fines «to wrong bank» — social network still blocked in country

The Brazilian Supreme Court has declared that Twitter (X) cannot resume operations in the country because the fine imposed on the social network was paid to the wrong bank.

As a reminder, Twitter’s operation in Brazil (and later Starlink) suspended in August for failing to comply with the conditions for moderating hate speech and not having a legal representative in the country. The country’s Supreme Court also gave Apple and Google five days to remove the app from the stores and imposed fines of 50,000 reais ($8900) for using the social network through a VPN.

Twitter owner Elon Musk immediately called the judge fake and closed all offices in the country. However, after a while, it seems that he decided to make concessions and agree to the court’s terms: some accounts were blocked and attempted to pay the $5 million fine, but, according to Reuters, the make a mistake with the name of the bank.

The court has now ordered Twitter to correct the mistake, after which company representatives will have to talk to the local prosecutor general. No timeframe has been announced for the social network’s resumption of operations.

As a reminder, Elon Musk acquired Twitter in 2022for a whopping $44 billion, starting the epic of turning the social network into a new service with «freedom of speech» called X. At the same time, not all of Twitter’s relaunch efforts have been successful: some new featuresworked with errorsand the launch of a new subscriptioncaused fake news and trolls to spread on social media. And the billionaire’s own statements, which are oftenwere quite controversial, did not appeal to many advertisers — last year with TwitterApple and Disney are gone(Musk then used themaccused of a deliberate boycott and sent «to hell with»).

All of these events have also affected the company’s earnings and, in particular, its value — if we take into account the initial estimate of $44 billion that Musk gave during the acquisition, it is now fell by a catastrophic 79% (i.e., up to $9.4 billion), based on the latest data from Fidelity (the company that helped Elon with the acquisition).