Billionaire Elon Musk has denounced the ban on X in Brazil, where the social media company failed to comply with court orders.
Brazilian Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes has unfroze the bank accounts of social media platform X and satellite internet company Starlink after ordering the transfer of more than $3 million owed in fines.
In a statement on Friday, the country's highest court said the Brazilian government recovered 7.2 million Brazilian reals ($1.3 million) from a X bank account and nearly 11 million Brazilian reals ($1.9 million) from a Starlink account to settle the fines.
“After payment of the full amount owed, the Justice [de Moraes] “It considered that there was no need to keep the bank accounts frozen and ordered the immediate unfreezing of the bank accounts/financial assets,” the statement said.
De Moraes previously made the controversial decision to ban X in Brazil after its owner, right-wing billionaire Elon Musk, refused to comply with court orders to remove accounts accused of spreading misinformation.
The social media platform also failed to meet the deadline to appoint a legal representative in Brazil, as required by law.
Musk owns both X and Starlink, and initially, after X was banned from court, Starlink representatives reportedly indicated that its internet service would not comply with the restriction.
Still, the decision to penalize both X and Starlink has been questioned by legal analysts since they operate as separate companies.
In response to the court's decision to shut down X, Musk called De Moraes an “evil dictator.”
The South African billionaire has shown a penchant for promoting far-right conspiracy theories and false claims of election fraud.
Musk also expressed sympathy for supporters of Brazil's right-wing former leader Jair Bolsonaro, who spread baseless claims about the country's October 2022 election, which he lost.
Bolsonaro's supporters eventually called for a military coup to overturn his defeat and stormed the country's legislature on January 8, 2023. Bolsonaro has since been banned from holding public office until 2030 and, like Musk, has clashed with Judge Moraes over investigations into his actions.
While Musk has denounced efforts by liberal governments to restrict the spread of false claims on X, he has in the past expressed few qualms about removing content at the request of right-wing governments seeking to stifle dissent or silence critical voices.
In 2023, X, formerly known as Twitter, agreed to a request from India's Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government to block access to a BBC documentary exploring his role in an anti-Muslim pogrom in 2002.
“Indian rules on what can appear on social media are quite strict and we cannot go beyond the laws of the country,” Musk said at the time. “If we have to choose between our people going to prison or us following the laws, we will follow the laws.”
