Brazilian users flooded back onto X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday, in an “inadvertent and temporary service restoration” that some say was a manoeuvre by CEO Elon Musk to flaunt the law.
According to the Financial Times, a spokesperson at X cited a change in network providers as the cause, explaining that the original shutdown in Brazil had made certain infrastructure for the rest of Latin America inaccessible.
“While we expect the platform to be inaccessible again in Brazil soon, we continue efforts to work with the Brazilian government to return very soon for the people of Brazil,” they added. Officials, meanwhile, warn that the change to Cloudflare has made blocking the social media platform “more much complicated.”
Wednesday marked the first time Brazil’s 20 million X users could access the platform since it was banned on 31 August, as Musk continued to buck orders from Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes.
[See more: The social media platform X has been banned in Brazil]
Moraes, as part of his work cracking down on digital misinformation, requested X remove some far-right accounts suspected of spreading misinformation. Rather than comply, Musk shut down the company’s Brazilian office in protest and when he failed to appoint a new representative in accordance with the law, Moraes banned the platform.
The switch to Cloudflare complicates that ban. “Unlike the previous system, which used specific and blockable IPs, the new system uses dynamic IPs that change constantly. Many of these IPs are shared with other legitimate services, such as banks and large internet platforms, making it impossible to block an IP without affecting other services,” Abrint, the Brazilian Association of Internet and Telecommunications Providers, told Reuters.
Blocking Cloudflare itself would also impact other services “which could negatively affect the internet as a whole.”
Brazil’s telecommunications regulator Anatel, tasked with implementing the court order, is working to notify content delivery network providers and telecom companies to block X again, although the person providing information to Reuters said it was unclear how long it will take for providers to comply with the order. Anatel will need to work carefully to avoid those broader impacts.
