Brazilian court sprays Musk's X with more fines for returning after ban

A very expensive 2 days in September for the blocked social media platform

X's accidental reappearance in Brazil will cost the company 10 million Brazilian reais, or about $1.83 million, in the latest ruling handed down by the country's Federal Supreme Court.

Elon Musk's social media mouthpiece, X - the artist formerly known as Twitter - was blocked in Brazil in August after declining to shutdown some accounts on the platform for allegedly spreading misinformation.

That order was made by Judge Alexandre de Moraes who insisted X had to answer to local authorities. A deadline to appoint a compliance officer at X came and went, and, alongside financial penalties, the block order was made. Even Musk's satellite broadband operation, Starlink, was forced to comply with the order, after initially refusing.

According to the latest decision, the company has complied with the requirement for appointing a legal representative and paid the original fines.

However, there remains the unfortunate incident once the block was imposed, when Brazilian users gained access to the social media platform after it unexpectedly came back to life. At the time, X was changing network providers, and claimed the switch created "an inadvertent and temporary service restoration to Brazilian users."

The change involved Cloudflare, which had no comment to make on the incident, other than to point to the statement from X's Global Affairs team. Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince sought to distance the cyber security firm from the furor, saying Cloudflare had neither helped X dodge the ban or assisted Brazil's regulators in blocking X once again.

According to reports, X was also available to Brazilian users via Starlink on September 23.

All in all, X was accessible again for an expensive two days, and De Moraes has added a R$10 million ($1.83 million) fine for its failure to comply with the court order.

The decision handed down on Friday acknowledged that X had begun making steps toward compliance, including by appointing a legal representative, but demanded payment of fines for non-compliance. Musk's apparent disdain for the Brazilian judicial system, and for De Moraes in particular, is a part of what led this mess in the first place.

While it is likely that X will meet all the requirements of the initial decision – the Brazil market is too lucrative to abandon – the additional fine for those two days of accidental non-compliance is likely to irritate Musk and his minions.

The fine is, however, small change compared to how much the value of Xitter has tumbled under Musk's stewardship. The investor Fidelity was recently reported to have cut the valuation of its stake in X to $4.19 million, down from the $19.66 million it had initially invested. ®