X changes course in Brazil

Elon Musk’s social network X (formerly Twitter) appears to be backing down from its confrontation with Brazil’s Supreme Court.

The New York Times reported on a new court filing in which the company’s lawyers stated that X had complied with the court’s orders — blocked the indicated accounts, paid the fines and appointed a new official representative in the country.

According to sources, the Supreme Court in its own letter informed company X that it had not provided the relevant documents and gave it five days to supplement them.

The dispute began with Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes’ investigation into election disinformation. Moraes ordered the company to block some accounts, and X at one point said it would comply but instead shut down its operations in Brazil.

Moraes blocked the service and threatened users with fines if they tried to bypass the ban with a VPN. X returned to the network in Brazil earlier this week, although Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince told TechCrunch that the timing of the company’s recent switch to Cloudflare infrastructure was just a “coincidence.”

During the ban, Brazilian users sought alternative social media, leading to a surge in popularity for sites like Bluesky and Tumblr.

X did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment, and neither Musk nor X’s Global Government Affairs account appeared to mention the news. (Both accounts have criticized Moraes’ decisions in the past.) On Wednesday, X said it would “continue its efforts to work with the Brazilian government to return to Brazilian citizens as soon as possible.”