Politics Supreme Court in Brazil threatens Platform X with heavy fines

After some users of the online platform X in Brazil regained access to the service despite a nationwide ban, the Supreme Federal Court is threatening the company with a heavy fine. For every day that tech billionaire Elon Musk's platform does not respect the court-ordered shutdown, a fine of five million reais (around 825,000 euros) will be imposed, Brazilian federal judge Alexandre de Moraes announced.

The lawyer accuses the online service of using technical tricks to circumvent his order. In the meantime, some users in Brazil had regained access to X because, according to media reports, the company was using servers from IT service provider Cloudflare. These can act as an intermediary between a website and the user. They use IP addresses that are constantly changing, which prevents access from being blocked by internet operators.

After months of conflict, the South American country's Supreme Court ordered X to be blocked at the end of August. Prior to this, the news platform had allowed a court-ordered deadline to appoint a legal representative to pass. The company also refused to block the accounts of right-wing activists who spread conspiracy narratives and other false information.

Owner Musk accused Judge Moraes of attacking freedom of expression and called him an "evil dictator". The federal judge had already opened an investigation against Musk himself in April for obstruction of justice and incitement to commit crimes.

SDA