> Last Wednesday, Sachs wrote to the NYPD to challenge the administrative subpoena, which the NYPD had sent on its own authority, without any warrant or judicial approval. If the NYPD did not withdraw the subpoena, Sachs told the NYPD, Clancy would go to court with a motion to quash it.

If it's not backed by a court order, it's a polite request.

But even when it's a court demand, companies have several different counter-measurements. For example, they can tell the court "we can't provide data because we don't have that data" (Signal does this), or "we do have that data, but extracting it is resource-intensive, so the court should pay up" (some of the "Twitter Files" were precisely about this), or straight up ignoring non-American court orders (this is or at least was Reddit's general policy).