Elon Musk, left, and Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes.
Reuters (L) | Getty Images (R)
Elon Musk’s X faces hefty daily fines in Brazil for allegedly avoiding service ban there, according to a statement by the country’s highest court on Thursday.
The fines imposed by Brazil’s highest court total $5 million in Brazilian reals, about $920,000 a day. The court said it would continue to impose “joint liability” on Starlink, the satellite Internet service owned and operated by SpaceX, Musk’s aerospace company.
X’s suspension in Brazil was initially ordered by the country’s chief justice, Alexandre de Moraes, in late August, with the orders upheld by a justice commission in early September. The court found that under Musk, X had violated Brazilian law, which requires social media companies to hire a legal representative in the country and remove hate speech and other content deemed harmful to democratic institutions. The court also found that X failed to suspend accounts that allegedly implicated federal officials.
X recently moved to servers hosted by Cloudflare and appeared to use dynamic Internet Protocol addresses that were constantly changing, allowing multiple users in Brazil to access the site. In a previous installation, the company had used static and specific IP addresses in Brazil, which were more easily blocked by ISPs at the behest of regulators.
Musk, who owns X, formerly known as Twitter, has been attacking De Moraes for months and has continued to do so after the injunction was issued. He described De Moraes as a villain, comparing him to Darth Vader and the Harry Potter character Voldemort. He has also repeatedly called for De Moraes to be impeached.
Brazil previously withdrew money for fines it imposed on X from the accounts of X and Starlink at financial institutions in the country. The new fines will start from September 19, with the court calculating a total based on the “number of days of non-compliance” with its previous orders to suspend X nationwide.
While Musk presents himself as an absolute champion of free speech, X has accepted requests to remove profiles and posts in countries such as India, Turkey and Hungary.
Musk and X may be in the process of complying with Brazil’s takedown orders as well. Correio Braziliense, a Brazilian publication, reported on Wednesday that X has started blocking accounts pursuant to suspension orders issued by the country’s highest court.
Among the apparently banned accounts were those of some Internet influencers who are reportedly being investigated for spreading disinformation and promoting attacks against democratic institutions in Brazil.
X said he has no plans to restore access for Brazilian users.
“When X shut down in Brazil, our infrastructure to provide services in Latin America was no longer accessible to our team,” a company spokesperson told CNBC on Wednesday. “To continue to provide optimal service to our users, we have changed network providers. This change resulted in an inadvertent and temporary restoration of service to Brazilian users. Although we expect the platform to be unavailable again in Brazil soon, we are continuing our efforts let’s work with the Brazilian government to return very soon for the people of Brazil.”
Brazil’s national telecommunications agency, Anatel, was ordered by de Moraes to prevent access to the platform by blocking Cloudflare as well as Quickly and EdgeUno servers and others that the court said were “created to circumvent” X’s suspension in Brazil.
A Cloudflare spokesperson told CNBC in a statement that the company “does not enable or prevent blocking,” adding that “many of Cloudflare’s customers choose to use dedicated IPs, which is not unique in the industry.”
Before the suspension, X had about 22 million users in Brazil, according to Data reporting.
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