Brazilian judge lifts X suspension after Elon Musk backs down

Brazil’s highest court ruled that X can come back online after its billionaire owner Elon Musk backed down from a public tussle with the country’s judicial system over misinformation.
“X is proud to return to Brazil,” the social media platform said in a statement posted on its global government affairs account. “We will continue to defend freedom of speech, within the boundaries of the law, everywhere we operate.”
The ruling is the latest in a multi-month feud between Musk and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who Musk branded an “evil dictator cosplaying as a judge.”
The CEO and world’s richest person, who is lauded in conservative circles as a champion of free speech, called the ban “censorship.”
X, formerly Twitter, went dark across Brazil after Moraes ruled on Aug. 30 that it would be suspended for failing to pay a $3.28 million fine and identify a legal representative in the country.
Users who tried to log into X could be fined up to $8,900 a day. The court also froze bank accounts in the country belonging to Starlink, Musk’s satellite internet service, to cover the fines.
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After the ban, Brazilians had brief access to X after Musk tried to use third party cloud services to evade the ban, but it went down again after Moraes threatened to slap the company with huge fines.
The judge earlier ordered X to shut down several accounts that it said were spreading disinformation and hate speech, the majority of which were run by far-right supporters of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro.
The company initially refused, but told the court in September that it had blocked nine accounts under investigation. It also said it appointed a Brazil-based legal representative.
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Moraes mandated Anatel, Brazil’s telecommunications regulator, to help bring the site back online within 24 hours, although it was still offline as of Wednesday evening.
Juscelino Filho, Brazil’s communication minister, called the company’s compliance a “victory for the country” in a statement. “We showed the world that here our laws should be respected, by whomever it may be,” he said.
With 21.5 million Brazilian users, the country was X’s sixth-biggest market.
Contributing: Reuters