By Jack Nicas and Ana Ionova
Elon Musk suddenly appears to be giving up.
After defying court orders in Brazil for three weeks, Musk’s social network, X, has capitulated. In a court filing Friday night, the company’s lawyers said that X had complied with orders from Brazil’s Supreme Court in the hopes that the court would lift a block on its site.
The decision was a surprise move by Musk, who owns and controls X, after he said he had refused to obey what he called illegal orders to censor voices on his social network. Musk had dismissed local employees and refused to pay fines. The court responded by blocking X across Brazil last month.
Now, X’s lawyers said the company had done exactly what Musk vowed not to: take down accounts that a Brazilian justice ordered removed because the judge said they threatened Brazil’s democracy. X also complied with the justice’s other demands, including paying fines and naming a new formal representative in the country, the lawyers said.
Brazil’s Supreme Court confirmed X’s moves in a filing Saturday, but said the company had not filed the proper paperwork. It gave X five days to send further documentation.
The abrupt about-face from Musk in Brazil appeared to be a defeat for the outspoken businessman and his self-designed image as a warrior for free speech. Musk and his company had loudly and harshly criticized Brazil’s Supreme Court for months, even publicly releasing some of its sealed orders, but neither had publicly mentioned their reversal by Saturday morning.
Brazil is one of X’s most important international markets, with analysts estimating that it had more than 20 million users there. Since X has been blocked, Brazilians have flocked to the social network’s rivals, including Bluesky and Meta-owned Threads.The longer X remain blocked, the more Musk risked losing market share and revenue — problematic for a company that has alienated many American advertisers by allowing users to say just about anything on the site.
Another Musk-controlled company, the satellite-internet service Starlink, was also caught in the crossfire. Brazil’s Supreme Court took $2 million from Starlink in Brazil to cover fines it had issued against X.
Many of the accounts X had been ordered to take down in Brazil belonged to prominent right-wing Brazilian commentators who had once intensely praised Musk for resisting the court’s orders. Some were now conflicted about his backpedaling.
Musk “has bowed down,” Paulo Figueiredo, a right-wing pundit who had his X account blocked in Brazil, wrote in a post Thursday, when X first hired new lawyers in Brazil, signaling a shift in stance. “It’s a very sad day for freedom of expression.”
A day later, Figueiredo said he understood Musk’s stance “and appreciates his efforts.”
The turn of events was a major victory for Brazil’s Supreme Court and the powerful justice who has led the push to regulate online speech, Alexandre de Moraes.
Moraes has become one of Brazil’s most polarizing figures since the nation’s Supreme Court granted him broad authority to order tech companies to take down content that he deems a threat to Brazil’s institutions.
Since 2019, he has ordered social networks to take down at least 300 accounts, according to a New York Times analysis of a portion of his court orders, which had been leaked or released publicly. For more than half of those accounts, Moraes did not provide details in the orders for why they should be taken down. He has generally issued such orders under seal, but the Times analyzed orders published by X and U.S. congressional Republicans. There are likely many more orders that remain secret.
Moraes has said that he takes down accounts that attack Brazil’s democratic institutions. When ordering X to be blocked last month, he said it was because Musk intended to “allow the massive spread of disinformation, hate speech and attacks on the democratic rule of law.”
Musk had made confronting Moraes one of his pet issues this year, at times posting repeatedly about the judge, insulting him, calling for his jailing and vowing to defy his orders. The issue came to a head when X stopped complying with the judge’s orders and then closed the company’s offices in Brazil to avoid consequences.
The first signs of the reversal came Thursday, when Moraes said in a court filing that X had hired new lawyers in Brazil.
One of those lawyers, Sérgio Rosenthal, said in a text message Thursday that X planned to comply with all of the judge’s orders to take down accounts. “The goal is to regularize the company’s situation in Brazil,” he said.
On Saturday morning, a different lawyer, André Zonaro Giacchetta, said the conditions to return to Brazil “have already been met, but it depends on the assessment of” Brazil’s Supreme Court.
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