X lost court battle after trying to claim “Twitter has ceased to exist”

X has lost a legal battle in Australia in which the company tried to avoid a $400,000 fine by claiming Twitter no longer exists. First, the creative legal argument ArsTechnicacame amid a more than year-long dispute with the Australian eSafety Commission.

The commission asked the company, then known as Twitter, last February to provide details about its handling of child sexual exploitation on the platform. In its response, X did not answer a number of questions and “left some sections completely blank,” the commission said in a statement. As a result, the eSafety Commission fined the company over $415,000 for non-compliance.

It was an attempt to fight this fine that led to X’s claim that it should not be responsible because Twitter had “ceased to exist.” From the court file:

The argument is not exactly new for the company owned by Elon Musk. CEO Linda Yaccarino has also repeatedly claimed that X is a “brand new company” to avoid scrutiny. She repeated that phrase several times earlier this year at a Senate hearing on child safety issues.

However, Australian federal judge Michael Wheelahan found the claim unconvincing, saying that X’s argument “required leaps of logic that were not supported by adequate explanation.” X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

eSafety Commissioner Inman Grant welcomed the decision. “Would be the argument of