ALBAWABA - According to a statement released by the nation's highest court on Thursday, Elon Musk's X and Starlink might be subject to daily penalties of five million reals, equivalent to almost $920,000, for allegedly avoiding a restriction on the service in Brazil.
A statement made by the court indicated that it would keep imposing "joint liability" on Starlink, the satellite internet service that is owned and managed by SpaceX, Musk's aerospace enterprise.
In what is ostensibly an effort to preserve the freedom of Brazilian citizens to "free speech" on the widely used social media platform, Elon Musk has been engaged in a conflict with Alexandre de Moraes, a judge on Brazil's Supreme Court, for a substantial amount of time now.
The self-described “free speech absolutist” and the Brazilian judge began their feud in January 2023 when former President Jair Bolsonaro's far right supporters, fueled by social media rumors of electoral fraud, stormed the National Congress and tried to violently overthrow Lula da Silva, the democratically elected Leftist president, as reported by Aljazeera.
In late August, the Supreme Court determined that Musk and X had broken Brazilian law, which mandates that social media platforms hire a local attorney and take down hate speech and other information that is considered detrimental to democratic institutions, CNBC reports.
X is now employing Cloudflare servers with dynamic IP addresses, allowing Brazilian users to access the site. In previous form, the corporation utilized static and unique IP addresses in Brazil, which were effortlessly banned by internet service providers on regulators' orders.
A spokesperson from X issued an explanation for the unexpected access that some users had on Wednesday, stating that a switch in network providers had “resulted in an inadvertent and temporary service restoration to Brazilian users,” according to BBC.
“While we expect the platform to be inaccessible again in Brazil soon, we continue efforts to work with the Brazilian government to return very soon for the people of Brazil,” the statement added.
