Featured Image Credit: Getty/Michael Gonzalez/Getty/PATRICK PLEUL
Topics: Elon Musk, Twitter, Money, World News
Gerrard Kaonga
Topics: Elon Musk, Twitter, Money, World News
Getting Twitter reinstated in Brazil might take a big longer after millions of dollars are sent to the wrong bank.
With Elon Musk at the helm, Twitter hasn’t exactly been sailing smoothly.
While many have taken to the social media platform to complain about seemingly unnecessary changes, some have taken things a step further.
Twitter has been suspended since late August in the entire nation of Brazil for failing to comply with court orders related to hate speech moderation. It was also suspended due to failing to present a legal representative in the country, as required by law.
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Brazil represents one of the platform's most coveted markets, so the company has been attempting to resolve the issue ever since.
According to a Reuters report, paying the fines is the only outstanding measure demanded by the courts in order to reauthorize Twitter in the country again.
On October 4, Twitter filed a fresh request to have its services restored in Brazil, saying it had paid all pending fines. However, someone made one hell of an error.
Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes responded to this request by asking that the payment to be transferred to the right bank.
The Justice also stated that once the fines are sorted, Brazil's prosecutor general will give his opinion on the recent requests made by Twitter's legal team in Brazil.
Moraes ruled that Twitter had paid its paid 28.6 million reais ($5.24 million) in fines to the wrong bank, and would therefore be postponing its decision.
Twitter’s legal team has denied this and said they paid the fines correctly. They also added that further input from the prosecutor general was unnecessary.
Twitter recently shut down its office in Brazil after its representative was threatened with arrest for failing to comply with court orders.
The company has also criticised the legal actions as 'censorship' and claimed they were unlawful under Brazilian law.
Musk himself, as well as the company have accused the judge of political bias as he had previously ordered those accounts spreading misinformation, mostly belonging to supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro, be blocked while under investigation.
This move also came with heavy penalties for Brazilians who attempted to circumvent the ban.
Anyone who was caught using a VPN (virtual private network) to access Twitter faced daily fines of nearly US $9,000, which is more than average annual income of many citizens.