Elon Musk’s ex has paid a million-dollar fine to settle a dispute with a judge in Brazil who banned the platform in its biggest Latin American market because of disinformation.
But the platform transferred the money to the wrong account, Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes, who ordered X’s shutdown in August, said on Friday (Oct 4).
X, formerly known as Twitter, was fined $5.2 million for failing to comply with a series of court orders.
Moraes confirmed that the social network had paid the full amount, but into a separate account from the court order and said that he had ordered that the funds be redirected immediately.
Moraes blocked X on August 31 after Musk refused to remove dozens of right-wing accounts accused of spreading disinformation and failed to name a new legal representative in the country as ordered.
X, which had 22 million users in Brazil before being blocked by Moraes, hopes payment of the fine will resolve the dispute.
Last week it said it had complied with other court demands, including appointing a legal representative in Brazil.
The confrontation between Musk and Moraes turned into a high-stakes battle closely watched around the world as a test of both freedom of expression and the fight against disinformation.
Musk, angry over the ban, hit out at Moraes, calling him an “evil dictator” and dubbing him “Voldemort” after the villain from the “Harry Potter” series.
But in recent days he has been notably more silent on the subject and has appeared eager to do whatever is necessary to get the X ban lifted.
The platform briefly resumed service in Brazil in mid-September following a technical fix, which it claimed was caused “inadvertently”.
But it went offline again after Moraes threatened additional fines.
The Battle of X with Mores began during the 2022 presidential election campaign in Brazil, when Mores ordered the company to neutralize the accounts of the failure-skeleton Zayer Bolsonaro’s followers.
The standoff escalated following attacks by Bolsonaro supporters on federal buildings in Brasília following the inauguration of Bolsonaro’s leftist rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as president in January 2023.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
