The social media platform X began returning to Brazil on Wednesday, after remaining inaccessible for more than a month due to a clash between its owner, Elon Musk, and a justice on the country’s highest court.

Internet service providers began restoring access to the platform after Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes authorised lifting X’s suspension on Tuesday.

“TWITTER IS ALIVE,” Lucas dos Santos Consoli, known as luscas on X, wrote on the platform to his more than 7 million followers.

“I’m happy that the platform decided to follow the laws of Brazil and finally adapted, after all I’ve been using the app for almost 15 years so I can’t deny that I was missing it,” the 31-year-old told The Associated Press.

De Moraes ordered the shutdown of X on August 30 after a months-long dispute with Musk over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation. Musk had disparaged de Moraes, calling him an authoritarian and a censor, although his rulings, including X’s nationwide suspension, were repeatedly upheld by his peers.

Musk’s company ultimately complied with all of de Moraes’ demands. They included blocking certain accounts from the platform, paying outstanding fines and naming a legal representative. Failure to do the latter had triggered the suspension.

“This sends a message to the world that the richest person on the planet is subject to local laws and constitutions,” said David Nemer, who specialises in the anthropology of technology at the University of Virginia. It could set a precedent as to how other countries that are clashing with Musk — such as Australia — could move forward, as it shows Musk is not unbeatable, he added.

Brazil — a highly online country of 213 million people — is one of X’s biggest markets, with estimates of its user base ranging from 20 million to 40 million.

“X is proud to return to Brazil,” the company said in a statement posted on its Global Government Affairs account. “Giving tens of millions of Brazilians access to our indispensable platform was paramount throughout this entire process. We will continue to defend freedom of speech, within the boundaries of the law, everywhere we operate.”

Julia Bahri, an 18-year-old law student, said she was delighted with X’s return. She said that losing access to the platform had led to “one of the most desperate feelings I’ve experienced for a while,” adding that she had felt lost with regards to news.

Bahri said she uses X to express herself, whereas Instagram and Snapchat are mostly for posting photos.

The August 30 ban came two days after the company said it was removing all its remaining staff in Brazil. X said de Moraes had threatened to arrest its legal representative in the country, Rachel de Oliveira Villa Nova Conceição, if the company did not comply with orders to block accounts.

Brazilian law requires foreign companies to have a local legal representative to receive notifications of court decisions and swiftly take any requisite action — particularly, in X’s case, the takedown of accounts.

Sleeping Giants Brazil, a platform for activism that seeks to combat fake news and hate speech, said the resumption of X’s activities in Brazil marked “a significant victory for Brazilian democracy.”

“It is crucial to remain steadfast against efforts to weaken democratic state authority, institutions and values,” it said in a statement.

Some of Brazilian X’s users have migrated to other platforms, such as Meta’s Threads and, primarily, Bluesky. It’s unclear how many of them will return to X.

In a statement to the AP, Bluesky reported that it now has 10.6 million users and continues to see strong growth in Brazil. Bluesky has appointed a legal representative in the South American country.

“Never get back with your eX,” Paul Frazee, a developer at Bluesky, wrote on the platform on Tuesday.

X is returning to Brazil weaker than it was before the ban, said Nemer, noting that X is now worth less than a fifth than when Musk bought Twitter. The platform has lost a lot of users, especially in Brazil, he said.

Brazil was not the first country to ban X — but such a drastic step has generally been limited to authoritarian regimes. The platform and its former incarnation, Twitter, have been banned in Russia, China, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Venezuela and Turkmenistan. Other countries, such as Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt, have also temporarily suspended X before, usually to quell dissent and unrest.

X’s dustup with Brazil has some parallels to the company’s dealings with the Indian government three years ago, back when it was still called Twitter and before Musk purchased it for $44 billion. In 2021, India threatened to arrest employees of Twitter (as well as Meta’s Facebook and WhatsApp), for not complying with the government’s requests to take down posts related to farmers’ protests that rocked the country.

Musk’s decision to reverse course in Brazil after publicly criticising de Moraes isn’t surprising, said Matteo Ceurvels, research firm Emarketer’s analyst for Latin America and Spain.

“The move was pragmatic, likely driven by the economic consequences of losing access to millions of users in its third-largest market worldwide, along with the millions of dollars in associated advertising revenue,” Ceurvels said.

“Although X may not be a top priority for most advertisers in Brazil, the platform needs them more than they need it,” he said.

The X account of Elon Musk in seen blocked on a mobile screen in this illustration after Brazil’s telecommunications regulator suspended access to Elon Musk’s X social network in the country to comply with an order from a judge who has been locked in a months-long feud with the billionaire investor, Sao Paulo, Brazil taken August 31, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The Brazilian Supreme Court’s Justice Alexandre de Moraes on Tuesday (October 8, 2024) authorised the restoration of social media platform X’s service in Brazil, over a month after its nationwide shutdown, according to a statement posted on the court’s website.

Elon Musk’s X was blocked on August 30 in the highly online country of 213 million people — and one of X’s biggest markets, with estimates of its userbase ranging from 20 to 40 million.

Mr. De Moraes ordered the shutdown after a monthslong dispute with Mr. Musk over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation. Mr. Musk had disparaged Mr. de Moraes, calling him an authoritarian and a censor, despite the fact his rulings, including X’s nationwide suspension, were repeatedly upheld by his peers.

Despite Mr. Musk’s public bravado, ultimately X complied with all of Mr. de Moraes’ demands. They included blocking certain accounts from the platform, paying outstanding fines and naming a legal representative. Failure to do the latter had triggered the suspension.

A Brazilian Supreme Court panel on Monday unanimously upheld the decision of one of its justices to block billionaire Elon Musk’s social media platform X nationwide, according to the court’s website.

The broader support among justices undermines the effort by Musk and his supporters to cast Justice Alexandre de Moraes as an authoritarian renegade who is intent on censoring political speech in Brazil.

The panel that voted in a virtual session was comprised of five of the full bench’s 11 justices, including de Moraes, who last Friday ordered the platform blocked for refusing to name a local legal representative, as required by law. It will stay suspended until it complies with his orders and pays outstanding fines that as of last week exceeded $3 million, according to his decision.

The platform has clashed with de Moraes over its reluctance to block users, and has alleged that de Moraes wants an in-country legal representative so that Brazilian authorities can exert leverage over the company by having someone to arrest.

De Moraes also set a daily fine of 50,000 reais ($8,900) for people or companies using virtual private networks, or VPNs, to access X. Some legal experts questioned the grounds for that decision and how it would be enforced, including Brazil’s bar association, which said it would request the Supreme Court review that provision.

But the majority of the panel upheld the VPN fine — with one justice opposing unless users are shown to be using X to commit crimes.

Brazil is one of the biggest markets for X, with tens of millions of users. Its block marked a dramatic escalation in a monthslong feud between Musk and de Moraes over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation.

Over the weekend, many X users in Brazil said they felt disconnected from the world and began migrating en masse to alternative platforms, like Bluesky and Threads.

The suspension has also proceeded to set up a showdown between de Moraes and Musk’s satellite internet provider Starlink, which is refusing to enforce the justice’s decision.

“He violated the constitution of Brazil repeatedly and egregiously, after swearing an oath to protect it,” Musk wrote in the hours before the vote, adding a flurry of insults and accusations in the wake of the panel’s vote. On Sunday, Musk announced the creation of an X account to publish the justice’s sealed decisions that he said would show they violated Brazilian law.

But legal experts have said such claims don’t hold water, noting in particular that de Moraes’ peers have repeatedly endorsed his rulings — as they did on Monday. Although his actions are viewed by experts as legal, they have sparked some debate over whether one man has been afforded too much power, or if his rulings should have more transparency.

De Moraes’ decision to quickly refer his order for panel approval served to obtain “collective, more institutional support that attempts to depersonalise the decision,” Conrado Hübner, a constitutional law expert at the University of Sao Paulo, told The Associated Press.

It is standard for a justice to refer such cases to a five-justice panel, Hübner said. In exceptional cases, the justice also could refer the case to the full bench for review. Had de Moraes done the latter, two justices who have questioned his decisions in the past — and were appointed by former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro — would have had the opportunity to object or hinder the vote’s advance.

X’s block already led de Moraes last week to freeze the Brazilian financial assets of Starlink as a means to force it to cover X’s fines, reasoning that the two companies are part of the same economic group. The company says it has more than 250,000 clients in Brazil.

Legal experts have questioned the legal basis of that move, and Starlink’s law firm Veirano has told the AP it has appealed the freeze. It declined to comment further.

In a show of defiance, Starlink informally told the telecommunications regulator Anatel that it will not block X access until its financial accounts are unfrozen, Anatel’s press office said in an email to the AP. Starlink didn’t respond to a request for comment.

“If I’m not mistaken, it was a WhatsApp message that the legal representative of Starlink sent to the president of Anatel, forwarding a message from the company in the United States,” said Arthur Coimbra, a board member of Anatel, on a video call from his office in Brasilia.

That communication doesn’t hold legal value as conclusive evidence of non-compliance but prompted the telecommunications regulator to conduct inspections on Monday.

Coimbra said Anatel would finish an inspection report by the end of the day and then send it to the Supreme Court. He added that the maximum sanction for a telecom company would be revocation of its license. If Starlink loses its license and continues providing service, it would be committing a crime. Anatel could seize equipment from Starlink’s ground stations in Brazil that ensure the quality of its internet service, he said.

The ground stations receive and transmit data between satellites and the Earth. When a user accesses the internet via satellite, the data request is sent to the satellite, which then forwards it to the ground station connected to the global internet network.

That means a shutdown of Starlink is likely, although enforcement will be difficult given the company’s satellites aren’t inside national territory, said Luca Belli, coordinator of the Technology and Society Center at the Getulio Vargas Foundation. It is popular in Brazil’s expansive rural and forested areas.

Anatel’s President Carlos Baigorri told local media GloboNews late Sunday afternoon that he has relayed Starlink’s decision to Justice de Moraes.

“It is highly probable there is a political escalation,” because Starlink is “explicitly refusing to comply with orders, national laws,” said Belli, who is also a professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation’s law school.

The arguments from Musk, a self-proclaimed “free-speech absolutist,” have found fertile ground with Brazil’s political right, who view de Moraes’ actions as political persecution against Bolsonaro’s supporters.

On Brazilian orders, X previously has shut down accounts including of lawmakers affiliated with Bolsonaro’s right-wing party and far-right activists accused of undermining Brazilian democracy. X’s lawyers in April sent a document to the Supreme Court, saying that since 2019 it had suspended or blocked 226 users.

Bolsonaro and his allies have cheered on Musk for defying de Moraes. Supporters rallied in April along Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana beach with a giant sign reading “Brazil Thanks Elon Musk.”

Earlier that month, de Moraes ordered an investigation into Musk over the dissemination of defamatory fake news and another probe over possible obstruction, incitement and criminal organization.

Bolsonaro is also the target of a de Moraes probe over whether the former president had a role in inciting an attempted coup to overturn the results of the 2022 election that he lost.