Elon Musk’s social network X was barred in Brazil’s largest Latin American market for more than a month due to a dispute over misinformation, but the Supreme Court of that country said on Tuesday that it was lifting the ban.
“I authorize the immediate return of the activities” of the social platform, Judge Alexandre de Moraes said in his ruling, after X settled millions of dollars in fines for failing to comply with a series of court orders.
He ordered the Brazilian communications regulator a 24-hour window to restore access to the millions of Brazilian users of the once-named Twitter platform.
Musk has not yet responded to the ruling.
The world’s richest man, who considers himself a “free speech absolutist,” and Moraes have been locked in a months-long battle over a deluge of misinformation about Brazil’s 2022 election campaign on the internet.
Tensions reached a breaking point on August 31, when Moraes abruptly barred X for neglecting to remove the accounts of numerous followers of the late far-right president Jair Bolsonaro and to designate a new legal counsel for Brazil.
The controversy, which pitted corporate accountability versus freedom of speech, was widely followed throughout the globe.
Musk became enraged and unleashed a tirade at Moraes, branding him as a “evil dictator” and evoking the character Voldemort from the “Harry Potter” films.
Moraes, for his part, accused the platform of undermining democracy by allowing disinformation to flourish — a position backed by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who declared that the state would not “be intimidated by individuals, companies or digital platforms that believe themselves to be above the law.”
X eventually complied with all of Moraes’s demands in order to have the suspension lifted.
Last week, the judge confirmed that the company had also settled around $5.2 million in fines.
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