Brazil lifts ban on Musks X after complying with court demands

SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazil's Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes on Tuesday approved the restoration of social media platform X's service Brazilmore than a month after the statewide shutdown, according to a released court document.

Elon Musk's De Moraes ordered closure after a Months of argument with Musk about freedom of expression, right-wing extremist representations and misinformation. Musk had denigrated de Moraes, calling him authoritarian and censorious, even though his judgments, including the suspension of X, were repeatedly echoed by his colleagues.

Despite Musk's public bravado, X ultimately complied with all of de Moraes' demands. These included blocking certain accounts on the platform, paying outstanding fines and appointing a legal representative in the country. Failure to do the latter had triggered the ban.

“The resumption of (X)’s activities on national territory was conditioned solely on full compliance with Brazilian laws and absolute compliance with the decisions of the judiciary out of respect for national sovereignty,” de Moraes said in the court document.

“X is proud to return to Brazil,” the company said in a statement posted to its Global Government Affairs account. “Throughout this process, providing tens of millions of Brazilians with access to our indispensable platform has been of utmost importance. We will continue to defend freedom of expression to the fullest extent of the law wherever we operate.”

Just two days before the ban, on August 28th, X said it withdrew all of its remaining personnel in Brazil “with immediate effect,” de Moraes said, threatening to arrest his legal representative in the country, Rachel de Oliveira Villa Nova Conceição, if X did not comply with account blocking orders.

Brazilian law requires foreign companies to have a local legal representative to receive notifications of court decisions and quickly take any necessary action – particularly, in X's case, deleting accounts. Conceição was first appointed as X's legal representative in April and resigned four months later. The company appointed her to the same position on September 20, according to the public filing with the Sao Paulo Registrar of Companies.

In an apparent effort to provide Conceição of possible violations by receiving it in writing from the company, according to the company's records.

Conceição works for BR4Business, a business services company. The two-page website offers no insight into operations or staff. “Something great is on the way,” it says in English at the top of the site’s main page. On the other side you will find a detailed data protection declaration.

At three of its listed offices in Sao Paulo, receptionists told the AP that the company's offices were empty and employees were working remotely. Neither Conceição nor BR4Business responded to multiple calls and emails from the AP.

There is nothing illegal or suspicious about using a company like BR4Business for legal representation, but it shows that the University of Oklahoma.

“It doesn’t show any intention to really work for the country. Take Meta and Google for example. “They have an office, a government relations department, precisely designed to interact with public authorities and discuss Brazil’s regulatory policies in relation to their companies,” Silva added.

In fact, it's rare for an established, influential company like X to have only one legal representative, said Carlos Affonso Souza, a lawyer and director of the Institute for Technology and Society, a Rio-based think tank. And that could be problematic in the future.

“The concern now is what comes next and how X, once operational again, will manage to meet the demands of the market and local authorities without creating new tensions,” he said.

Some of them Brazilian X users have migrated to other platformslike Meta's Threads and especially Bluesky. It is unclear how many of them will return to X. In a statement to the AP, Bluesky reported that the company 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.

Brazil was not the first country to ban X – quite the opposite – but such a drastic move has generally been limited to authoritarian regimes. The platform and its previous incarnation Twitter have been banned in Russia, China, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Venezuela and Turkmenistan. Other countries, such as PakistanTurkey and Egypt have also previously temporarily suspended X, usually to quell dissent and unrest.

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

Musk's decision to change course in Brazil after publicly criticizing de Moraes was not surprising, said Matteo Ceurvels, Latin America and Spain analyst at research firm Emarketer.

“The move was pragmatic and likely due to the economic impact of losing access to millions of users in its third largest market worldwide, as well as the millions of dollars in associated advertising revenue,” Ceurvels said. “Although X may not be the top priority for most advertisers in Brazil, the platform needs it more than they need it.”

___

Ortutay reported from San Francisco