Brazil's top court says X paid pending fines to wrong bank | Hacker News Reader

Brazil's top court says X paid pending fines to wrong bank

reuters.com

42 pointsarromatic84 comments

But how is this possible? Did they get a scam letter with wrong account number?

They wired the money to the Brazilian government, but to the wrong bank account.

That's not really possible. The Brazilian government has only one bank account since the 88's Constitution. It's called "the unique government account".

I'm trying to understand that news since today's morning. It makes no sense.

Edit: Another comment clarified it. Twitter didn't deposit it on the government account, they created a new account arbitrated by the judge and deposited it there.

It is just the court playing technicalities to delay things. There is an election this Sunday. We don't need Xitter meddling in it.

No, this is just incompetent lawyers/legal representatives. Every lawyer worth their salt knows how to make a payment to the judiciary correctly, specially when the amount is so high. The judiciary branch receives millions of payments everyday, there is a specific procedure (and it's not even hard)

And as for the court "playing technicalities", that's just false. The court literally told the bank to fix it directly (i.e. move the money to the right account). The court is ordinarily under no obligation of being so practical about this kind of stuff. In lower courts it would probably take weeks to fix this mess.

That's exactly my point. The court could allow X back in a minute if they wanted or take days to do it. It will take days.

You clearly never been even close to a Brazilian court. Nothing is ever this fast, because courts are handling literal tons of paper everyday and everything takes time. It took me almost half a year to see a money in a case I won, even though the money was already deposited and no appeals were possible.

Twitter is being given special treatment in the most beneficial way possible.

Anyway, the whole conspiratorial argument is dumb. Twitter is not really relevant in Brazil, and today's elections are mayoral elections. If you think there's any national-level grandiose political fight happening, you are probably in need of a chair.

> If you think there's any national-level grandiose political fight happening, you are probably in need of a chair.

Looks like you are really engaged into politics, aren't you? So many assumptions. I'm as Brazilian as you, smartass. I'm happy Xitter is out of Brazil and loving to see Alexandre de Moraes playing with Elon Musk.

Is there any chance for twitter to be saved ?

There is nothing left to save.

There never was. Twitter was always a cancer, and if Musk does manage to drive it into the ground then he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for this.

If it worked for Kissinger, I don't see why not.

It has longposts now, so that's an improvement at least.

How ? Are long text for a social media that has 24 hour lifetime and exclusive to premium users worth it . I would be nice if it was available for all , since sometimes you need more than 280 character to express your self .

>Twitter was always a cancer

You know they don't literally mean that right? This joke is seriously getting tired imo. Twitter actually has an established space in discourse and it shapes conversations or used to shape conversations. It has literally helped people get resources during times of crisis, most recent event where twitter helped people real time was during Covid in 2021, here in India. People were exchanging info real time for oxygen cylinders and during this crisis they made a special section for it as well which updated very frequently so people could get help or give help. When our govt didn't do shit, Twitter helped.

There are many such examples, Twitter is(was) always at the fore front whenever there was some war/event happening and reporters preferred to post updates on twitter real time instead of their news boards.

You might not see value in it, but if it goes away, I doubt that space will be filled easily. Threads is for entertainment. I don't see any of the "threads" on that platform making to mainstream discourse.

Let's please stop making this tired argument.

Twitter is really important for humanity whether you believe it or not.

Twitter shouldn't be privately owned. That's the problem - Jack Dorsey wasn't able to promise a non-censored town hall and neither was Musk. They are running a business that is inherently at-odds with the ideal of informing people. They can't make money just providing Twitter - as a business it doesn't work.

The utility Twitter provided isn't written-off, but it really shouldn't have happened on a for-profit advertising platform. What people are unwilling to accept is that Twitter was lightning in a bottle - it won't come back because everyone learned the lesson that it doesn't make money. You can either move onto a radical platform that tries to fix the original sin (eg. Mastodon/BlueSky/Nostr) or you can stick with the huddled masses that rely on a censored and monetized platform to speak freely online.

The radical platform alternatives still censor and often to the whims of a random person. It's like a reddit subreddit or wikipedia article: you are censored by the moods of the admin. They are privately owned.

The solution is easy; host your own instance. Federated solutions let you put your money where your mouth is and host yourself to your own content. If what you have to say is considered useful, you'll be a viral figure in no time.

Allow-only instances won't show your content but chances are they won't show most content. These are hugboxy environments you'd probably not want to be around anyways (and they sure don't want to be around you).

Block-only instances will show your content as long as it doesn't piss them off. If you are being racist or posting illegal content, you're gonna get muted. They have absolutely no obligation to propagate your content if you're not going to reach bare-minimum decorum.

> If what you have to say is considered useful, you'll be a viral figure in no time.

The assumption that useful speech goes viral is incredibly misjudged.

I can see how you'd think that if you've never used Mastodon.

> Jack Dorsey wasn't able to promise a non-censored town hall

I believe his version of twitter was the closest thing we could get to an "uncensored" twitter. Everything is relative. How do you run and sustain a platform where people who call for genocide are getting their voice amplified? And is that even legal? Like, the platform has to take responsibility if it isn't going to "censor" speech.

Freedom of speech shouldn't mean freedom of reach. Yeah, if you want to make some ill-taste racist jokes, you must be shadow banned so that unless people specifically search for your name, the platform shouldn't amplify their voice.

> it won't come back because everyone learned the lesson that it doesn't make money

How can anyone dismiss Twitter earning >$5B in revenue as something not viable? Dorsey's twitter had too many employees. IIRC, their personnel costs alone was something like a $1B. Why do you need such a big team? Why are you hiring so many people and running mini experiments in the company hoping that you can become facebook level money making machine?

Dorsey should have realized that they are never going to become facebook level rich and just stay content with what they have and grow modestly and layoff people. Keep working on your core features. You don't need to be the next facebook, you are already twitter, heck, you have your company's name as a noun in a dictionary. Reduce your costs and coast. Nothing wrong with that.

But you need to be content with yourself first to think about company's decisions like that.

What has happened with twitter is truly shameful and Dorsey got with the wrong people (that's what i believe happened since he rolled his old twitter equity into x(itter) equity).

Why did dorsey left bsky for twitter again ?

> I believe his version of twitter was the closest thing we could get to an "uncensored" twitter.

I mean... I don't agree with that, considering that BlueSky exists now. I never used either of Dorsey's social medias but I would argue BlueSky is fundamentally closer to uncensored than X or Twitter ever was.

> How can anyone dismiss Twitter earning >$5B in revenue as something not viable?

Because their expenditures were through the roof, and even running it on a skeleton team a-la X seems to be losing money hand over fist. Twitter could have contented themselves with lower revenue, but they'd have to redesign their product stack or find ways to make more money elsewhere. Both of those take time and burn goodwill with the community.

At the end of the day, as a lifelong outsider to Twitter, it's just an endlessly ironic fate for the site. I have no love for Elon Musk but I also don't see Jack Dorsey as some messianic genius. The dude sold out his site in his final years because he failed to operate it for a decade and couldn't force people onto his crypto bandwagon. He never tried to correct course on Twitter (instead funding BlueSky as a contingency) and basically left his userbase to suffer as a value-add to his stock package. When I hear people complain about how bad Twitter is I just imagine frogs sitting in a boiling pot asking why their legs are numb. Do we really have to go over this again?

Do you think another social network couldn't have filled this role? I don't know about India, but to me Twitter with its length limits seems to be the ultimate Outrage Generation Machine. Easily 99% of Twitter content I see is either ragebait or jokes, and there's only so many people good at joking.

If 99% of Twitter content you see is ragebait or jokes then isn't that on you for following accounts that post this type of stuff?

I've gotten enormous value from it from following accounts that post content I deem relevant to my interests.

Don't you view your timeline?

My claim is that the very structure of Twitter emphasizes that type of content, more than any other large social network. Whatever you or me see isn't very relevant, it's anecdata.

When the only way to interact with Twitter was via SMS (hence the 160 character limit), ragebait was basically non-existent.

Since the eternal September (prior to Musks' acquisition) the lowest common denominator has been getting lower by the year.

You have a point that blasting out a tweet which is limited to a low character count does lend itself to ragebait yet the volume of ragebait tweets, in my opinion, is also influenced by the current culture of the network (Musk) and the context of the times (election 4 weeks away).

Fair enough, thank you for your input.

Twitter was always cancer. It was before Musk, and it still is. You just happened to like how this particular turd smelled before.

> Twitter is really important for humanity whether you believe it or not.

This may be true. But whatever it speaks about humanity, it is not very flattering.

> twitter helped people real time was during Covid in 2021

That's not twitter helping, that's people helping. If there were no social networks, this would still happen. Having a billionare controlling global speech isn't worth it in any way even if it brings punctual benefits like the ones you cited

Thankfully twitter format will autodie soon with newer generations.

> Twitter was always a cancer,

Twitter is the ONLY social network that is actually social, and attempts to connect strangers. Contrary to Facebook, etc where you need to be ‘friends’ first.

Reddit, Threads, Mastodon, Bluesky, Instagram, TikTok etc.

Even Facebook has features for connecting strangers e.g. Groups.

Reddit ? that's a forum for content generation

Mastodon ? No one knows you unless you have other socials

Instagram ? it blocks pc traffic , no retweet

Threads ? maybe the only one viable but it's meta

Facebook ? Um good luck

Tiktok ? It's just videos , it's far from soical media .

This isn’t even at odds. Connecting strangers historically was one of the main recipes for social fireworks.

X's crowdsourced fact checking is a really good feature. It's worth using for that alone. The pathological liars at the brazilian government would get fact checked on a daily basis.

The fact that everyone still calls it twitter answers your question. =)

Maybe if he reverts the name.

I haven't updated the twitter app just to keep the bird (no, more like I find the X ugly), mayyyybe I can make this phone last long enough so I never actually see the X.

it already has been

> any chance for twitter to be saved ?

Define saved.

Hell, define "Twitter" too. Does GP mean the company? The user community, whatever that is? Some core functionality of the site?

Bankruptcy , Spam , Branding , Workforce .

X/Twitter going bankrupt would be a choice by Musk. He presently shows no indication of having lost love for it.

It's bleeding users. Bleeding users = no revenue . He can't sustain it forever from his pocket and lost user means the platform is as worthless as a random mastodon instance that no one knows about.

> can't sustain it forever from his pocket

Why not? Even if he doesn't restructure the debt he's basically created, in xAI, enough personal wealth to bankroll X/Twitter for a decade.

Likely not worth it — consider the kinds of stuff Elon leads. Twitter is the least prestigious among them. He has far more interesting places to gamble on.

> not worth it -- consider the kinds of stuff Elon leads. Twitter is the least prestigious among them

It's practically getting him Cabinet-level power without the accompanying checks in an incoming Trump administration. (Or Vance '28. Et cetera.)

America didn't have a Rupert Murdoch since Hearst. Newsrooms preserved their independence. Twitter doesn't have a newsroom. It doesn't have journalists. It has Elon and his peons. That's powerful.

Fidelity has said it is worth 1/5 of when Musk bought it.

https://mashable.com/article/x-twitter-value-down-fidelity

And so no it can't be saved if it continues on its current trajectory.

Depends if Elon bought out the bondholders yet

Bluesky / ATProto is a better iteration that can be so much more in the long run

No personalized algo in bsky. I don't want to see a thousand low quality post from a specific feed.

The Discovery feed is personalized and very reminiscent of the twitter feed.

The open protocol nature also means anyone can write any feed that works any way they want for anyone to use

The discovery feed is barely functional . Dosen't learn what i want to see nor does the search . Open protocol and api is bskys best feature that i love but a real algo isn't one git clone away for average user nor it is is financially viable.

Still better than what Elon had been forcing into my Xitter feed before I left for good

The money was wired to the state , not to a bank, so how is it possible they went through if it wasn't a government bank account

The money was wired to a government account, but the wrong one.

this is not how money transfer works in Brazil, Judicial fines are paid using a GRU (is a type of document that you generate in the goverment IRS site, with the codes that you type in the bank and it transfers the money). If any of the info dosent match, the money is not transfered. IF they paid the wrong account, someone in the goverment fucked up.

Source: I was sued by the brazilian govement because my accountant fucked up and had to hirre a layer to negotiate and paied my fees in the course of 10 years.

It would not be the first time the govermnet fucked up in this case. They sended the judicial notice for Twitter legal representation but someone typed the wrong email address. Since they did not receive the notice, they did not replied, and the Judge made a threat to arrest the legal repsentative, Rachel de Oliveira Villa Nova Conceição. Thats why Elon Musk decided to close the local office, so his employes would not be implied in his decision to not cooperate with the goverment.

Alexandre the Moraes pretty much ignored the constitution in every step this proccess.

This comment will be downvoted to hell, but reality is reality.

I'm pretty sure you can make a mistake filling out a GRU.

You have to fill in the destination and I bet this is where somebody made a mistake. I'm also sure it will take some time and patience to get it sorted.

> Judicial fines are paid using a GRU

According to the official decision from the judge (https://noticias-stf-wp-prd.s3.sa-east-1.amazonaws.com/wp-co...), the value was deposited using a DJE (Documento para Depósitos Judiciais ou Extrajudiciais), not a GRU. The judge ordered the bank to transfer the value to the correct account.

(source for the official decision: https://noticias.stf.jus.br/postsnoticias/stf-determina-tran...)

Ok, that makes sense.

I guess a good international translation would be "Twitter created an account they can't withdraw, and deposited the money there. The Brazilian Judiciary can say where the money goes to, but it was not sent to the government yet."

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