Supreme Court Justice Moraes fines X almost US$ 1 million per day for circumventing suspension in Brazil

Brasil de Fato

Brazil’s Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes has fined the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, BRL 5 million a day (almost US$ 1 million) for circumventing court orders to keep on operating in Brazil.

In his decision, the justice ordered X in Brazil to immediately suspend “the use of its new virtual addresses through the CDN servers Cloudflare, Fastly and Edgeuno and other similar servers, created to circumvent the judicial decision to block the platform in Brazilian territory, under penalty of a daily fine of BRL 5 million.”

Elon Musk’s platform is currently blocked in the country, and its virtual address (IP) has been changed from Tuesday to Wednesday (18), according to the Brazilian Association of Internet and Telecommunications Providers (Abrint, in Portuguese). The address is now the same as that of the company that provides hosting services for the site, Cloudflare.

The courts could order the code of the new address to be blocked, but as Cloudflare hosts hundreds of other pages, including official government portals and bank websites, this became impractical.

With the change, some users could access the social network via the mobile app. Others, however, could not access X, as some operators suspended the website address (x.com), not the IP.

Moraes spoke of “malicious, illicit and persistent recalcitrance by the X platform in complying with court orders” from the STF. “There is, therefore, no doubt that the X platform – under the direct command of Elon Musk – once again intends to disrespect the Brazilian judiciary, since Anatel identified the strategy used to disobey the court order issued in the case, including the suggestion of the measures to be adopted to maintain the suspension,” says Moraes in the decision.

In the same vein, the National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel, in Portuguese) stated that Elon Musk’s behavior “demonstrates a deliberate intention to breach” the Court’s orders.

The case

On August 30, Moraes ordered the suspension of X in Brazil after the company failed to establish a legal representative in the country. Two days earlier, the justice had given the social media platform 24 hours to comply with the order. The deadline was achieved, and Twitter was suspended.

Elon Musk closed his office in the country, laying off around 40 employees, and accused the Brazilian court of making arbitrary decisions. The company even classified the blocking as a reaction to Alexandre de Moraes, who allegedly “threatened” to arrest and fine the then head of the office in Brazil, Rachel de Oliveira Villa Nova Conceição. The action had been taken for non-compliance with judicial decisions, within the scope of inquiries reported by Justice Moraes investigating the spread of fake news on social platforms, especially about the fairness of electronic voting machines in Brazil.

According to Brazilian law, a company cannot operate in the country without a legal representative, since courts need someone to contact in case of subpoenas, for example.

At the beginning of September, the five Supreme Court Ministers of the First Panel voted unanimously to uphold Moraes’ decision that led to the platform’s ban.