The Brazilian Supreme Court has lifted its ban on X (formerly Twitter), according to media reports, with billionaire owner Elon Musk complying with court orders and paying millions in fines tied to his repeated attempts to defy Brazilian law.
After a months-long battle with Brazilian authorities, Musk began reversing course in September, culminating in the restoration of the popular social media site on Tuesday. The billionaire owner paid 28 million reais (US$5.1 million) in fines, agreed to appoint a new legal representative as required by Brazilian law and to remove extremist content from the platform – the Supreme Court demand that sparked the feud.
“Although many people [including Musk] have tried to frame this as a freedom of speech issue,” Professor Luca Belli of the Getulio Vargas Foundation law school told the Financial Times, “at the end it really boils down to sovereignty, to the capacity of a country to regulate services and technologies according to laws.”
[See more: X makes an ‘inadvertent and temporary’ return to Brazil]
Back in April, Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered the suspension of dozens of X accounts as part of a larger crackdown on disinformation in the wake of an attempted coup by supporters of the previous far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro. Musk refused, calling Moraes a “dictator” and demanding his impeachment while positioning himself as a champion of free speech. When X shuttered its Brazilian headquarters, removed its representative in the country and refused to appoint a new one, a clear violation of Brazilian law, Moraes banned the platform entirely on 30 August.
A month after the ban went into effect, however, X agreed to take down the disputed account, appoint a legal representative and pay millions in fines, including those related to its “inadvertent” skirting of the ban in mid-September. X announced Tuesday that it was “proud to return to Brazil,” the largest market in South America and one of the biggest in the world.
It remains to be seen if all of its 22 million Brazilian users will return to the platform now that access has been restored. Demand for VPNs, a tool that allowed users to circumvent the ban by hiding their location, soared but many users switched to alternative sites like Bluesky. Others may stick with more popular sites – X is only the ninth most population social media platform in the country, well behind Instagram and TikTok.
