VICTORY: Brazil lifts ban on X, platform formerly known as Twitter

On Tuesday afternoon, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported: Brazil’s Supreme Court said it was lifting a ban on Elon Musk’s social network X, which was blocked in its biggest Latin American market for over a month amid a row over [alleged] disinformation.

“I authorize the immediate return of the activities” of the social platform, Judge Alexandre de Moraes said in his ruling, after X settled millions of dollars in fines for failing to comply with a series of court orders.

It's worth noting that Moraes is the same judge who barred former President Eduardo Bolsonaro from running for President again until 2028.

He gave Brazil’s communications regulator 24 hours to make the platform previously known as Twitter accessible again to its millions of Brazilian users.

Musk had yet to react to the decision.

Moraes has for months been embroiled in a standoff with the world’s richest man, a self-declared “free speech absolutist,” over a flood of [purported] online disinformation related to Brazil’s 2022 election campaign.

On August 31, the tensions came to a head when Moraes dramatically blocked X for failing to deactivate the accounts of dozens of supporters of former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro and to name a new legal representative in Brazil.

The row, which pitted freedom of expression against corporate responsibility, was closely watched worldwide.

A furious Musk lashed out at Moraes by calling him an “evil dictator” and dubbing him “Voldemort” after the villain from the “Harry Potter” series.
Moraes, for his part, accused the platform of undermining democracy by allowing disinformation to flourish  — a position backed by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who declared that the state would not “be intimidated by individuals, companies or digital platforms that believe themselves to be above the law.”

X eventually complied with all of Moraes’s demands in order to have the suspension lifted.

Last week, the judge confirmed that the company had also settled around $5.2 million in fines.

For the original read from AFP, visit Insider Paper.