Brazilians will regain access to X after a Supreme Court judge lifted a ban introduced almost six weeks ago as a result of Elon Musk’s failure to comply with the South American country’s laws.
X was blocked in Brazil, where it had more than 22 million users, in late August in what was the culmination of a months-long fight between the network’s billionaire owner and Brazil’s Supreme Court.
The immediate trigger for the ban was Musk’s failure to appoint a local representative and pay millions of dollars in fines. But the backdrop was a long-running and politically charged battle between the outspoken tech billionaire and Brazil’s highest court, which was trying to combat the spread of far-right misinformation and anti-democratic content on the social network.
Brazilian experts and authorities partly blamed the spread of inflammatory content online for the far-right unrest that rocked Brasilia in January 2023.
Musk, who has aligned himself with far-right figures including former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, reacted angrily to the August ban. He called a Supreme Court judge, Alexandre de Moraes, a dictator and “Voldemort,” and posted a meme of a dog hanging its private parts in front of another animal as a sign of his revolt.
But in recent days Musk appears to have backtracked, paying 28.6 million reais (£3.9 million) in fines and appointing a Brazilian lawyer as X’s local representative, as required by the country’s laws.
Given these measures, Moraes wrote that he ordered “the end of the suspension and authorized the immediate return of X’s activities in Brazil” in a court decision issued on Tuesday.
Moraes ordered Brazil’s telecommunications regulator Anatel to implement his decision, although as of Tuesday night X remained inaccessible without the use of a virtual private network. The network is expected to be available in the next few hours.
Brazilian commentators and pro-democracy activists celebrated what they described as X’s surrender to the rule of law as a victory for the country’s institutions and sovereignty.
“(The ban) was not censorship,” Gerson Camarotti, a prominent political commentator, told the GloboNews news channel. “It was about non-compliance with judicial decisions… It is Brazilian democracy that wins with this.”
Camarotti noted how, over the past few weeks, life in Brazil had continued as normal, despite the absence of Musk’s increasingly unruly network. Several million Brazilian social media users simply moved to the rival Bluesky network.
“The most interesting thing is that Brazil did not stop because of (the ban on) the network”. of hate.”
In a statement, social media activism organization Sleeping Giants also expressed support for what it called “a significant victory for Brazilian democracy, our political institutions and the sovereignty of our state.”
“The suspension of Giants.
“Contrary to some misconceptions, X was not suspended in Brazil to suppress freedom of expression. The Supreme Court’s judicial decisions came after a series of orders that were ignored by the social media company.”
