Elon Musk fought the law. The law appears to have won.
Musk’s social media platform X has backed down from its fight with a Brazilian court after complying with court orders that had blocked users in the country from accessing X.
The platform has yielded to one of the main demands of Brazil’s Supreme Court by appointing a legal representative in the country. It has also paid outstanding fines and deleted user accounts that the court had ordered to be removed because it considered them to be a threat to the country’s democracy. The New York Times reported.
The battle is not over, however. The Supreme Court said X had failed to submit adequate documentation to prove it had appointed Rachel de Oliveira Conceicao as its Brazilian representative. It gave the company five days to submit documents validating its appointment.
Musk has been at odds with Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes since April after he ordered the company to remove more than 100 social media accounts that had been questioning whether far-right President Jair Bolsonaro had really lost the 2022 election.
By mid-August, Musk had closed X’s offices in Brazil, leaving it without a legal representative in the country — a legal requirement for companies to operate there. Moraes responded by ordering Brazil’s mobile and internet service providers to block access to X. Musk had used his platform to attack Moraes, describing him as an “evil tyrant,” among other things.
Last week, X resurfaced in Brazil after a software update it said had been an “involuntary and temporary restoration of service to Brazilian users”. But Moraes said it had been “intentional, illegal and persistent”, and fined it R$5m (£680,000), adding to the R$18.3m (£2.5m) already imposed.
Musk has opposed court orders to remove some posts and accounts in Brazil and Australia, saying he is a defender of free speech, though he has been less vocal about removing content in countries such as Turkey and India. Brazil’s population of 200 million people makes it an attractive market for social media companies.
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Starlink, the satellite internet service provider owned by Musk, had also been in dispute with Brazilian authorities. Moraes had frozen the company’s assets because it refused to enforce the blockade on X, but on Sept. 4 he said he would comply.