Brazil’s supreme court lifted its ban on Elon Musk’s X on Tuesday after the social-media platform complied with a justice’s demands. The nationwide ban was in effect for more than a month.
Brazil’s highest court previously upheld Justice Alexandre de Moraes’s August 30 order after X had declined to name a legal representative in Brazil. X ultimately complied with that demand and agreed to censor certain accounts and pay outstanding fines, the Associated Press reported.
“The resumption of [X’s] activities on national territory was conditioned, solely, on full compliance with Brazilian laws and absolute observance of the judiciary’s decisions, out of respect for national sovereignty,” the justice wrote in a court document that was made public.
Musk openly clashed with de Moraes for months over free speech and misinformation allegations on X, resulting in the judge’s imposed ban. The feud started after supporters of former right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro claimed that left-wing president Lula da Silva had stolen the country’s October 2022 election.
The owner of X repeatedly said de Moraes engaged in “authoritarian censorship” and even branded the judge a “dictator” for abusing Brazilian law.
Prior to the ban in late August, X announced that it was removing all remaining staff in Brazil after de Moraes threatened to arrest the company’s local legal representative if it did not comply with orders to block far-right accounts that supported Bolsonaro. At the time, X said the legal representative’s bank accounts were frozen after she resigned.
Rachel de Oliveira Villa Nova Conceição, the legal representative who was threatened with jail time, was reappointed to the role last month.
Under the terms of the previous order, any Brazilian who tried to access X via a virtual private network (VPN) would have been fined $8,900.
While Musk did not immediately respond on X to the lifting of the ban, X CEO Linda Yaccarino said she was “happy” that Brazilians could access the app again.
“X is proud to return to Brazil,” the platform’s global government-affairs team posted. “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.”
Brazil’s communications regulator has 24 hours to restore access to the country’s estimated 40 million X users, roughly 20 percent of the population. The ban prompted many Brazilians to migrate to other platforms, such as Threads and Bluesky.