Elon Musk loses battle with Brazilian justice over X ban

Elon Musk, the owner of the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), has bowed to the rulings of Brazilian courts after a lengthy and contentious legal battle with Brazil's Supreme Court, media reports said on Saturday.

The billionaire tech mogul with US and South African roots spent months defying a court order to appoint a local representative in Brazil.

In addition, he refused to issue court orders to close user accounts that the court found to be spreading misinformation and posing a danger to the nation.

Brazil has a population of 200 million people, making it a lucrative market for the social media company.

However, Musk's disregard for the Brazilian legal system resulted in heavy fines for the company and a nationwide ban on X in Brazil, one of the company's largest markets. This posed a serious threat to X's revenues by affecting essential advertising revenue.

Due to the ban, many X users also began to switch to X competitors, such as Meta.

Musk's satellite internet service provider Starlink also got involved in the dispute with Brazil, and the Brazilian judiciary froze the company's assets because it refused to enforce the block on X.

On September 4, Starlink said it would comply with the Brazilian court's orders.

Finally, in documents filed Friday, X's lawyers said the world-famous social media company has decided to comply with the court's orders.

In response, the Brazilian court on Saturday gave the company five days to file the necessary documentation and confirm that X will comply with the country's legal requirements and file the relevant papers to confirm the appointment of Rachel de Oliveira Conceicao as its Brazilian representative.

The right-wing Musk, who claims that “principles matter more than profit,” had portrayed his battle with Brazil's judiciary as an ideological fight over free speech. He also agreed to end his costly fight with Brazil's Supreme Court by deleting accounts linked to extremist groups that run disinformation campaigns in favor of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil's ousted far-right president.

More than 100 social media accounts have raised the question of whether Bolsonaro has lost the 2022 election.

The X owner has portrayed itself as a defender of free speech and since buying Twitter in 2022 has fired most of Twitter's trust and safety team and clashed with authorities in several countries over efforts to enforce content moderation standards.

He also challenged court orders to remove some posts and accounts in Australia, but has been less vocal about content removals in countries such as India and Turkey, where right-wing governments remain in power.