Brazil on Tuesday lifted its ban on Social Network
Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled that Mr. He said he did. The company also complied with other orders, including paying a fine and appointing a new representative in the country.
X’s compliance marked a complete reversal for Musk, who spent months loudly criticizing and defying the court, going so far as to publish a sealed order and shut down X’s offices in Brazil. In response, a court blocked X across Brazil in August, sending millions of Brazilians to the platform’s competitors.
But now Mr. X is back in Brazil, following orders that Mr. Musk has vowed to resist. “Providing tens of millions of Brazilians with access to our essential platform has been paramount throughout this process,” X said in a post on Tuesday. He added: “We will continue to protect free speech within the bounds of the law wherever we operate.”
Judge Moraes on Tuesday gave regulators 24 hours to allow X to come back online in Brazil, but it could take longer for the site to come back online.
The apparent resolution of the months-long battle was a defeat for Mr. Musk, who has described himself as an outspoken champion of free speech. His company lost business in one of its largest markets for a month, allowing a competitor to gain a foothold there, and ended up in exactly the same situation it started from.
But despite the legal and business losses, Mr. Musk and his supporters may see the ordeal as a public relations victory. Taking on Brazil’s Supreme Court, which has been aggressively acting to censor certain voices on social media, has left the billionaire entrepreneur's business on edge from those concerned that the government is restricting what can be said online. The house received widespread acclaim. That’s despite complying with government orders elsewhere to delete accounts and posts.
On the other hand, the result was a victory for the Brazilian Supreme Court, especially for the judge who led the fight against X, Justice Alexandre de Moraes.
Judge Moraes has become a polarizing figure in Brazil for his push to crack down on the internet, and his decision to block X was his most hotly debated yet. But many in Brazil, particularly on the left, praised the judge’s stance as an example of a developing country standing up to the world’s richest man and his powerful tech empire.
The development of events in Brazil suggests that nation states still have the upper hand in the ongoing power struggle with big technology companies.
The fight centers on Judge Moraes’ demands to remove X’s account, which he claims spreads hate speech and threatens Brazil’s democracy. In most cases, he does not disclose what the account did to justify the suspension. However, some of his orders released by X indicated that the report was sympathetic to protesters who questioned Brazil’s elections and called for a military coup.
Musk said the account suspension was a dangerous example of government control of speech. For months, he has lashed out at Judge Moraes, calling him a dictator and saying he should be jailed.
“This was like an arm-wrestle between the Supreme Court and Elon Musk,” said Laura Porto, a Brazilian lawyer and digital law expert. “And I see our success in imposing these restrictions as a victory for national sovereignty for Brazil as a whole.”
Musk has tried to implement various workarounds to counter the blocking of X, but regulators say Starlink, the satellite internet service he controls, will not comply with orders to block X in Brazil. stated. X then used a technical maneuver to temporarily circumvent the block and make the site work again for many Brazilians.
But when regulators threatened to revoke its license in the country, Starlink quickly complied. The technical workaround for X was blocked within a day. Judge Moraes even forced X to pay the fine that he had avoided in Brazil by extorting money from Starlink.
As a result, X suffered defeat after defeat, and the company finally folded.
But for many Brazilian conservatives, the controversy showed how Brazil’s Supreme Court has become too powerful. “We will not stop until we restore democracy to Brazil!” Brazil’s right-wing senator Eduardo Gilan wrote on X, accompanying a video of himself participating in a protest calling for the impeachment of Judge Moraes.
Others are hopeful that Musk’s reversal is just a temporary peace deal and that the businessman has other plans to overturn the court soon. Another right-wing Brazilian lawmaker recently said in an interview that Musk was only “temporarily” complying with the court’s order for the embargo on X to be lifted, but that he still lobbied for Judge Moraes’ impeachment. He indicated that he plans to do so.
Brazil is one of X’s most important international markets, with analysts estimating it has more than 20 million users in Brazil. But since the ban, Brazilians have flocked to other platforms, and it’s unclear whether they’ll rush back to X.
Bluesky, an X-like social network, has attracted a wave of new users in recent weeks. From August 31, when X went dark in Brazil, to September 29, average daily users of BlueSky’s app in Brazil doubled to 6.8 million, according to data intelligence firm SimilarWeb. .
The number of daily users of Meta’s X competitor Threads increased by a third to 3.6 million in Brazil during the period. In contrast, the number of Brazilians on X has fallen by 80% since the ban to 1.2 million, with most of the traffic being driven by users who tried and failed to access the platform, Similarweb explained.
However, some Brazilians were able to circumvent the ban by using virtual private networks (VPNs), a popular privacy software that disguises the location of their internet traffic.
Most of those people sided with Musk. According to a study by the Getulio Vargas Institute, a Brazilian research institute, about 90% of politically-related posts from users who remained logged in criticized the ban and Judge Moraes.
Judge Moraes has threatened to fine users $9,000 per day if they use VPN software to access the platform, and Brazil’s Federal Police last month issued a court order to identify those who failed to comply with the ban. announced that it had been received.
Despite Company X having a huge user base in Brazil, it is unlikely that Mr. Musk’s ban on the social media platform had a material impact on Company X’s revenue. Bloomberg reported last month that Brazil accounts for just 2% of total revenue.
Globally, X is still much larger than its rivals, with 84 million daily users on its app, according to Similarweb. Threads has around 41 million daily users and Bluesky has 7.5 million users, almost all of whom are currently in Brazil.
