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.

A Brazilian judge locked in a legal row with X owner Elon Musk on Friday said he would reinstate the social network in Brazil if a fine of around $1.8 million was paid.

Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes last month ordered X to be shut down in Brazil, after Musk refused to remove dozens of right-wing accounts and then failed to name a new legal representative in the country as ordered.

Moraes said that for X to be reactivated it must pay a fine of 10 million reais ($1.84 million), after denying a request to lift the suspension.

He also said Friday that the platform will be penalized for failing for two days to comply with an order to suspend the use of a server that allowed it to temporarily circumvent the nationwide ban.

High-profile judge Moraes has been engaged in a long feud with Tesla and SpaceX owner Musk as part of his drive to crack down on disinformation in Brazil.

The clash between the Brazilian court and the iconoclastic billionaire has morphed into a high-stakes tussle testing the limits of both freedom of expression and corporate responsibility in South America’s largest country.

X had more than 22 million users in Brazil before the ban, which came into place on August 31.

The company has in the last week started complying with the Brazilian court’s conditions to get reactivated, such as appointing a legal representative in the country.

Musk has repeatedly hit out at Moraes in social media posts, calling him an “evil dictator” and dubbing him “Voldemort” after the villain from the “Harry Potter” series.

Brasilia:

Elon Musk’s X told Brazil’s Supreme Court it has complied with orders to stop the spread of misinformation and asked a judge to lift a ban on the platform, according to a document seen by Reuters, in a major retreat by the billionaire battling “censorship”.

A decision from the court on X’s return is still pending, but people close to Musk in Brazil believe service could be restored in a matter of days.

The request to resume activities in Brazil, one of X’s largest and most coveted markets, followed a series of conciliatory moves by the social media platform signalling a dramatic backdown in Musk’s months-long feud with Justice Alexandre de Moraes.

The judge, who has spearheaded a local crusade against perceived attacks on democracy and the political use of disinformation, had shut down Brazilians’ access to the platform formerly known as Twitter in late August.

The draconian move followed Musk’s decision to shutter X’s offices in Brazil as he resisted complying with Moraes’ orders.

The judicial battle eventually affected another prominent business controlled by Musk, satellite Internet provider Starlink, whose accounts Moraes froze in a move leading Musk to brand him a “dictator.”

The Brazil spat was just one of a series of recent face-offs between Musk, who views himself as a champion of free speech, and governments including Australia and the UK seeking to prevent the spread of online misinformation.

Brazil was X’s sixth-biggest market globally, with about 21.5 million users.

“Musk was afraid to lose market share, he also realized that this was a nonsense battle and that Brazilians were not turning their backs on Justice Alexandre de Moraes as he had expected,” said Thiago de Aragao, a senior researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

In a final attempt at circumventing Moraes’ ban, X used cloud services offered by third parties, allowing Brazilians to access its platform in spite of the prohibition, but the attempt was short-lived, especially after Moraes threatened to impose heavy fines on the company.

Late last week, X moved in a more conciliatory direction, appointing a local legal representative as Moraes had demanded.

In the document sent to the Brazilian Supreme Court, the company controlled by Musk said it had blocked nine accounts under investigation in a hate speech and misinformation probe.

“His backtracking is very positive. Whether one agrees with it or not, the law is to be respected not defied,” Rubens Barbosa, a former Brazilian ambassador to the United States, told Reuters.

According to two people familiar with Musk´s thinking, the billionaire will take a very different approach once X comes back to Brazil, adding he may still be combative but will likely try to respect the law. “From now on, he will fight in the courts,” one of the people said.

X did not reply to a request for comment.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)