Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) and SpaceX are facing daily fines of about $920,000 in Brazil for allegedly violating a court order. The country’s Supreme Court claims that X is bypassing a block on a service used by roughly 22 million people. This marks an escalation in the ongoing dispute between Musk and the Brazilian government, which began when the platform was banned in late August.
According to a statement from Brazil’s Supreme Court, the daily fines for X amount to BRL5 million ($920,000). The court emphasized that it will continue to impose “joint liability” on SpaceX, which operates its Starlink satellite internet service in Brazil. These fines have been imposed since September 19 and will accumulate based on the number of days X fails to comply with the court’s order.
Background and Compliance Issues
The suspension of X in Brazil was ordered by the country’s Chief Justice, Alexandre de Moraes, in late August, and it was upheld by a panel of judges in early September. The court ruled that X, under Musk’s leadership, violated Brazilian law requiring social media companies to have legal representation within the country and to remove hate speech or content harmful to democratic institutions. While Musk advocates for free speech, X has previously complied with government requests to remove posts and profiles in countries such as India, Turkey, and Hungary.
However, in this case, X has not complied with demands to block accounts allegedly sharing personal or sensitive information about federal officials. To restore the platform’s access, X moved its servers to Cloudflare and began using dynamic IP addresses that change frequently, making them harder to block. Previously, X operated with static IP addresses, which were easily blocked by internet service providers at regulators’ requests.
Fines and Next Steps
A spokesperson for X told CNBC, “When X was taken down in Brazil, our infrastructure for providing services in Latin America was unavailable to our team. To continue offering optimal service, we changed providers, which unintentionally and temporarily restored service for Brazilian users. We expect the platform to become unavailable in Brazil soon, but we continue to work with the Brazilian government to restore service to Brazilian residents.”
The country’s National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel) has received orders to block Cloudflare, Fastly, and EdgeUno servers, which were said to be “designed to circumvent” the X outage. A Cloudflare spokesperson stated that using dedicated IP addresses is standard industry practice and that they do not enable or prevent blocking.
Brazil has already begun collecting fines from X and Starlink by withdrawing funds from their local bank accounts, adds NIXsolutions. Local outlet Correio Braziliense reported that X has started blocking accounts as required by court orders, including those of Brazilian bloggers suspected of spreading disinformation.
We’ll keep you updated on any further developments in this ongoing situation.