In the latest round of the dispute between Elon Musk and Brazil’s top court, a senior judge accused X of an “intentional, unlawful and persistent” effort to circumvent a court-ordered block, and imposed a fine of R$5 million (US$921,676) for each day the social network remains online.
The social media platform formerly known as Twitter, which has been banned by court order since August 30, became accessible to many users in Brazil on Wednesday after an update that uses cloud services offered by third parties such as Cloudflare, Fastly and Edgeuno.
This allowed some Brazilian users to access X without the need for a VPN, which is also prohibited in the country.
Wednesday afternoon, X described its reappearance in Brazil as an “involuntary and temporary restoration of service to Brazilian users.”
But influential Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes – who ordered the original ban as part of an attempt to crack down on anti-democratic and far-right voices – on Thursday described the move as a deliberate attempt to “circumvent the court’s blocking order.”
Moraes said the tactic was “confessed directly by its largest shareholder, Elon Musk, in a post on X addressed to the entire country.”
This was an apparent reference to a message from Musk on Wednesday aware“Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.”
According to Moraes, this “leaves no doubt that the X platform – under the direct command of Elon Musk – intends, once again, to disrespect the judiciary of Brazil.”
Moraes also ruled that if X does not pay the fines – as happened with the previous sanctions of R$ 18.3 million (US$ 3,376,509) applied to the platform – the obligation will fall on Musk’s satellite internet provider, Starlink.
The court argued that since the companies share the same owner and X no longer has a legal representative in Brazil – something required by Brazilian law and one of the reasons for the ban – the satellite internet provider becomes “jointly liable” for the fines owed by X.
After a day of unrestricted use, the national telecommunications agency, Anatel, announced on Thursday that, “with the active support of Cloudflare,” it managed to identify the mechanism that allows access to X.
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Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s far-right former president, took advantage of the platform’s temporary return to post a long message defending Musk and criticizing Moraes, who is handling most of the cases related to an attempted coup to keep the former army captain in power.
After “congratulating everyone for the pressure they are exerting in defense of democracy in Brazil,” Bolsonaro wrote that “X was banned for questioning court decisions that required not only the removal of specific posts but the permanent exclusion of accounts. This is prior censorship.”
The Supreme Court, which upheld Moraes’ decision to ban X, found that the social network had refused to remove accounts that spread false information, hate speech and incited crime.
Among them were threats against federal police officers “involved in investigations into digital militias and the attempted coup,” the court said.