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Elon Musk gives up his fight in Brazil

Elon Musk, the owner of X, has finally given in after a long and controversial battle with Brazil's Supreme Court.

Musk had spent months defying court orders to block certain accounts that the court deemed a threat to the country's democracy and to appoint a liaison in the country.

This resistance led to a nationwide ban on X in Brazil, one of the company's largest markets.

According to the New York Times, X's lawyers said in documents filed Friday that the company would comply with the court's orders. The Brazilian court on Saturday gave X five days to file official documents confirming it would comply with the demands.

It's a remarkable capitulation by Musk, who viewed the fight as an ideological battle over free speech. Since buying and then rebranding Twitter in 2022, Musk has presented himself as a champion of absolute speech. He fired most of Twitter's trust and safety team and has battled with authorities in several countries over efforts to enforce content moderation standards.

That's how he ended up in a months-long and costly battle with Brazil's Supreme Court. The court had originally ordered X to delete accounts linked to extremist groups that run disinformation campaigns in favor of Brazil's ousted far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro.

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At one point in the back and forth, Musk said in an X-post that he would lift the restrictions because “principles are more important than profit.”

Musk posted a dozen times on X on Saturday morning but did not address the news from Brazil. But the nationwide ban posed a serious threat to X's bottom line.

Former X users have flocked en masse to some of X's biggest competitors, such as Meta's Threads. The ban also posed a threat to the company's vital advertising revenue.

In addition, there were fines running into the millions.

While X initially agreed to comply with the court's orders, it later ignored them, prompting Brazilian Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes to threaten Musk with an obstruction of justice investigation and impose heavy fines on all restored X accounts.

The court also began imposing fines on Starlink, Musk's satellite provider, which initially refused to block X but later capitulated. The court later imposed fines on X amounting to nearly a million dollars a day when the platform was temporarily restored to some users last week.

This is a developing story, please check back later for updates.