Elon Musk’s X social media platform went offline again in Brazil on Thursday, internet providers said, a day after it resumed service in violation of a judicial ban.
Brazil’s Supreme Court had earlier in the day ordered X to suspend access to the platform, finding that the company had “illegally, persistently and intentionally” violated judicial rulings and would face fines of more than $900,000 a day for noncompliance.
Previous Twitter was banned in Latin America’s largest country last month, but access to the phone app was restored on Wednesday in what the government called a deliberate violation of the suspension.
X said its withdrawal of service was “unintentional and temporary.”
On Thursday, internet providers’ association ABRINT said the network went offline again “just before 4:00pm” local time, and was “blocked” once again.
Judge Alexandre de Moraes called X “recalcitrant” in a court order on Thursday and ordered state telecommunications agency Anatel to once again take the necessary steps to block access to the network.
The high-profile judge has been engaged in a long-running dispute with South African-born billionaire Musk over his campaign to crack down on misinformation in Brazil.
Before X was suspended last month, Musk had refused to remove dozens of right-wing accounts accused of spreading fake news, and also failed to appoint a new legal representative in the country as ordered.
– Musk’s assets frozen –
The suspension angered Musk and the far-right, and sparked a fierce debate inside and outside the country about freedom of expression and the limits of social networks.
This social media platform had more than 22 million users in Brazil.
Moraes also froze the assets of X and Musk’s satellite internet operator Starlink – which is set to operate in Brazil from 2022, particularly in remote communities in the Amazon – to ensure the payment of fines imposed on the social networks for violating court orders.
Last week, Moraes ordered the transfer of about $3 million from Musk’s companies to pay the fine imposed by X.
Musk has repeatedly attacked Moraes in social media posts, calling him an “evil dictator” and nicknamed him “Voldemort” after the villain from the “Harry Potter” series.
Internet providers said X was available again on Wednesday after an automatic update to the phone application.
The new software allowed the app to use a constantly changing identified IP address through a service called Cloudflare, making it harder to block.
Abrint said on Thursday that X has now stopped using Cloudflare.
While X said the restoration of service was done inadvertently, Anatel said the company had done so “intentionally” to circumvent the Supreme Court order.
Anatel said on Thursday it had “identified a system that we expect” will re-block the service.
While banning X, Moraes also ruled that those who use “technical circumvention” such as virtual private networks (VPNs) to access the blocked site could be fined up to $9,000.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
