Just in time for the holiday vibe, a federal judge ruled that X/Twitter violated contracts by failing to pay millions of dollars in bonuses that the social media company had promised its employees.

Reuters is reporting on the story of Mark Schobinger, Twitter’s senior director of compensation before leaving Elon Musk’s company in May. Mark sued X/Twitter the very next month, claiming breach of contract. His problem is that before and after billionaire Musk bought Twitter last year, the company promised employees 50% of their 2022 target bonuses – and never made those payments.

Now, US District Judge Vince Chhabria denied Twitter’s motion to dismiss the case, ruling that Schobinger plausibly stated a breach of contract claim under California law and he was covered by a bonus plan.
“Once Schobinger did what Twitter asked, Twitter’s offer to pay him a bonus in return became a binding contract under California law. And by allegedly refusing to pay Schobinger his promised bonus, Twitter violated that contract”, the judge wrote.The counterpart – that’s X/Twitter – and their lawyers argued that the company made only an oral promise that was not a contract and that Texas law should govern the case.

Meanwhile, Meta gets fined in Italy

Meanwhile, Meta is not too far back, bringing its fair share of holiday scandals as well. The Facebook, Instagram parent company was just fined in Italy for breaches of a ban on the advertising of gambling.

Meta has been fined €5.85 million ($6.45 million) in connection with profiles and accounts on Facebook and Instagram, as well as sponsored content that promoted either betting or games with cash prizes, communications watchdog AGCOM said in a statement on Friday.

Similar fines were set aside for YouTube (€2.25 million) and Twitch (€900,000) recently.