Brazil slaps Rs 7.7 cr fine on Elon Musk after X's brief return despite ban

Elon Musk-owned ‘X’ (formerly Twitter) and Starlink, have been fined $920,000 (about Rs 7.7 crore) by a Brazilian court. This penalty, imposed on Thursday (September 19), comes after users in Brazil temporarily regained access to the platform despite an ongoing ban. According to a report by the BBC, the platform’s access was restored due to an unintended server switch.

Unintended access restored briefly

The platform’s services were briefly re-enabled on Wednesday (September 18) after ‘X’ updated its servers in Brazil. During this brief period, a large number of Brazilian users accessed the site. The access was soon blocked again.

Later, on Thursday afternoon, ‘X’ switched its services back to its previous provider, as noted by the ABRINT Internet Provider Association, Brazil's leading trade group for Internet Service Providers (ISPs). ABRINT that was monitoring the servers, confirmed the change and noted that the platform’s public DNS (Domain Name System) indicated a return to the previous provider. The BBC quoted ABRINT as stating that ‘X’ had switched to servers hosted by Cloudflare.

ABRINT advisor Basílio Rodriguez Pérez claimed the incident was deliberate, saying, “Everything that happened during the day led us to believe that it was on purpose,” according to the BBC.

Court ruling and response

Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes called the incident a ‘trick’ to bypass the ban, imposing a fine of five million Brazilian Reals ($920,000) on both ‘X’ and Starlink for their violation. The ban on ‘X’ in Brazil was first enforced in August of last year, after the micro-blogging site ‘repeatedly ignored court rulings’. 

After the recent incident, the platform described the brief restoration of access on September 18 as the result of a “change of network providers” that led to an “inadvertent and temporary service restoration”.

Following the fine, an ‘X’ spokesperson said, “While we expect the platform to be inaccessible again in Brazil soon, we are continuing efforts to work with the Brazilian government to return as soon as possible for the people of Brazil.”