X lost a legal battle in Australia in which the company tried to avoid a $400,000 fine by claiming Twitter no longer existed. The creative legal argument, first ArsTechnicacame amid a more than year-long dispute with the Australian eSafety Commission.
The fee had asked the company, then known as Twitter, to provide details on its handling of child sexual exploitation on the platform last February. In his response, X failed to answer a number of questions and left “some sections entirely blank,” the commission said in a statement. . As a result, the eSafety Commission fined the company more than $415,000 for non-compliance.
It was an attempt to fight this fine that led to X claiming that he should not be liable since Twitter had “ceased to exist”. From filing to court:
X Corp argued that as of March 15, 2023, Twitter Inc ceased to be a person and therefore ceased to be a provider of social media services. It was argued that Twitter Inc therefore did not have the capacity to comply with the notice and that X Corp was not obliged to prepare a report in place of Twitter Inc, as X Corp was not the same person other than the supplier to whom the notice was issued.
The argument is not really new for the entity owned by Elon Musk. CEO Linda Yaccarino has also repeatedly claimed that X is a “brand new company” in an effort to avoid scrutiny. She repeated this phrase several times earlier this year during a Senate hearing on child safety issues.
Australian federal judge Michael Wheelahan, however, found the claim unconvincing, saying X’s argument required “leaps of logic that were not supported by adequate explanation.” X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the Electronic Security Commissioner, Inman Grant, welcomed the decision. “If X Corp’s argument had been accepted by the Court, it could have set a worrying precedent that the merger of a foreign company with another foreign company could allow it to evade regulatory obligations in Australia,” he said. Grant said.
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