Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered Elon Musk’s X to restore a block on its site in the country or face daily fines after the social media network managed to evade restrictions through a software update.
Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who has been sparring with Musk for months, ordered the platform pay a financial penalty of 5 million reais (US$922,250) per day that X remained accessible in Brazil, accusing it in an order published Thursday of attempting to “disobey” the court’s decision to ban the site.
Moraes blocked X in August after its billionaire owner refused to remove certain accounts and name a legal representative for the social media network in Latin America’s largest nation. But the platform formerly known as Twitter abruptly began working for Brazilian users this week after an automatic update switched the way it directs traffic, the country’s association of internet providers said Wednesday.
Internet companies say the structural change to the site’s IP addresses, which show regulators where data is coming from, made it much harder to block because they are shared by other services, like banks and Brazilian government websites.
The court order published Thursday instructs Brazil’s telecommunications regulator, Anatel, to block X access through network providers like Cloudflare, Fastly and EdgeUno, which it said were being used “to circumvent the judicial decision to block the platform in national territory.”
The order also mentions Starlink, the satellite internet provider owned by Musk, which could be forced to pay the fines if X doesn’t comply. Last week, the court seized 18.35 million reais from Musk’s companies, including Starlink, to pay other penalties.
Anatel said in a Thursday statement X’s conduct “demonstrates a deliberate intention to disregard the order.” It added that it expected the block to resume soon, and users in Brazil began reporting that they had once again lost access to the platform.
A spokesperson for X said late Wednesday that a change to its network provider following the ban caused caused an “inadvertent and temporary service restoration to Brazilian users.”
“We expect the platform to be inaccessible again in Brazil soon,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “We continue efforts to work with the Brazilian government to return very soon for the people of Brazil.”
Folha de S.Paulo newspaper reported Thursday that X had begun to comply with Moraes’s orders to suspend certain accounts on the platform. A spokesperson for the Supreme Court declined to confirm the report.
CNN Brasil, meanwhile, reported that the company would soon name a legal representative in Brazil.
— With assistance from Martha Beck.