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

Source: The Guardian

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

Social platform was blocked after tech billionaire failed to name local representatives and pay fines

Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
Tue 8 Oct 2024 23.40 BST
Last modified on Wed 9 Oct 2024 01.24 BST

Brazilians are set to regain access to X after a supreme court judge lifted a ban introduced nearly six weeks ago as a result of Elon Musk’s failure to comply with the South American country’s laws.

X was blocked in Brazil, where it had more than 22 million users, at the end of August in what was the culmination of a months-long arm wrestle between the network’s billionaire owner and the Brazilian supreme court.

The immediate trigger for the ban was Musk’s failure to name a local representative and pay millions of dollars worth of fines. But the backdrop was a long-running and politically charged battle between the outspoken tech billionaire and Brazil’s top court, which was trying to combat the dissemination of far-right misinformation and anti-democratic content on the social network.

Experts and Brazilian authorities partly blamed the spread of such incendiary online content for the far-right riots that rocked Brasília in January 2023.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/oct/08/musks-x-reinstated-in-brazil-after-complying-with-supreme-court-demands