Brazil lifts X ban after Elon Musk complies with court demands | X

Brazilians are expected to have access again

X was blocked in late August in Brazil, where it had more than 22 million users. This was the culmination of a months-long arm wrestling match between the network's billionaire owner and Brazil's Supreme Court.

The immediate trigger for the ban was Musk's failure to appoint a local representative and pay millions of dollars in fines. The background, however, was a long-running and politically explosive battle between the outspoken tech billionaire and Brazil's highest court, which was trying to combat the spread of right-wing misinformation and anti-democratic content on the social network.

Experts and Brazilian authorities blamed the spread of such inflammatory online content in part for the far-right unrest that rocked Brasília in January 2023.

Musk – who has allied himself with far-right figures such as former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro – reacted angrily to the ban in August. He called a Supreme Court judge, Alexandre de Moraes, a dictator and “Voldemort” and posted a meme of a dog dangling its genitals in front of another animal as a sign of his revolt.

But in recent days, Musk appeared to have backed down, paying 28.6 million reais (£3.9 million) in fines and appointing a Brazilian lawyer as X's local representative, as required by the country's laws.

In light of these moves, Moraes wrote that he had ordered “the end of the suspension and the immediate return of X's activities in Brazil” in a court order issued on Tuesday.

Moraes ordered Brazilian telecoms regulator Anatel to implement his decision – although X remained unreachable without the use of a virtual private network on Tuesday evening. The network is expected to be available in the coming hours.

Brazilian commentators and pro-democracy activists celebrated X's capitulation to the rule of law as a victory for the country's institutions and sovereignty.

“(The ban) was not censorship,” Gerson Camarotti, a prominent political commentator, told news channel GloboNews. “This was about non-compliance with court decisions…It is Brazilian democracy that benefits from this.”

Camarotti noted that life in Brazil has continued as normal in recent weeks despite the absence of Musk's increasingly fractious network. Several million Brazilian social media users simply switched to the competing network Bluesky.

“The most interesting thing is that Brazil has not come to a standstill because of (the ban on)

In a statement, social media activism organization Sleeping Giants also expressed support for what it called a “significant victory for Brazilian democracy, our political institutions and the sovereignty of our state.”

“The suspension of

“Contrary to some misconceptions, X was not suspended in Brazil to stifle freedom of expression. The U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings came after a series of orders that were ignored by the social media company.”