A judge has refused to continue orders requiring online platform X to lift its suspension on the account of a cryptocurrency analyst and take down about 400 accounts allegedly impersonating him.
The interim orders were granted by the High Court’s Mr Justice Max Barrett ex parte (one side represented) to Eduaordo Jardel Furlan Farina on September 18th last but were stayed the following day after counsel for X raised several issues, including concerns some of the alleged impersonator accounts may be genuine.
Mr Justice Barrett stayed the interim orders pending his judgment on whether to continue them until the full hearing of the case.
In his judgment published this week, the judge refused to continue the orders.
He said the orders sought were mandatory in nature and, to continue them at this stage of the case, Mr Farina had to demonstrate he had a strong case likely to succeed at trial.
X was entitled under its terms of service to suspend Mr Farina’s account and the suspension was not disproportionate, he said.
The sole evidence of harm to Mr Farina was his claim the suspension would damage his livelihood and reputation, he said. Damages would be an adequate remedy should Mr Farina win his case, he held.
The monitoring obligations which were sought to be imposed on X could potentially cause harm to it and to innocent account holders whose accounts might be flagged by automated systems seeking to detect account impersonators, he said
Mr Farina, an Athens-based content creator, cryptocurrency expert and analyst, had, when seeking the orders, estimated he was losing up to $20,000 (€16,258) monthly due to the suspension of his account.
Mr Farina said he was also concerned some of his followers have suffered financial losses from engaging with some imposter accounts in the mistaken belief they were dealing with him.
In March 2022, Mr Farina had impersonated a ‘blue tick’ verified account on X. He said his purpose was to test the strength of X’s protections against impersonation of verified accounts.
Mr Farina’s account was suspended on July 17th for “ban evasion”, a platform rule which prohibits account holders from circumventing X enforcement actions.
Mr Farina’s solicitor Rory Knight said his client immediately tried to contact X to appeal the suspension, which he believed was done in error, perhaps in the belief his account was an impersonation account, but X responded with automated replies.
Mr Farina had in 2012 set up an account with the defendant, then known as Twitter, and known as X from July 2023. XRP is a cryptocurrency used by a platform called the XRP Ledger and Mr Farina used his X account to provide advice to would-be investors in XRP.