Elon Musk suddenly appears to be giving up, The New York Times reported.
After defying court orders in Brazil for three weeks, Mr. Musk’s social network, X, has capitulated. In a court filing on Friday night, the company’s lawyers said that X had complied with orders from Brazil’s Supreme Court in the hopes that the court would lift a block on its site.
The decision was a surprise move by Mr. Musk, who know owns and controls X, after he said he had refused to obey what he called illegal orders to sensor voices on his social network. Mr. Musk had dismissed local employees and refused to pay fines. The court responded by blocking X across Brazil lat month.
Now, X’s lawyers said the company has done exactly what Mr. Musk vowed not to: take down accounts that a Brazilian justice order removed because the judge said they threatened Brazil’s democracy. X also complied with the justice’s other demands, including paying fines and naming a new formal representative in the country, the lawyers said.
The Guardian reported Elon Musk fought the law. The law appears to have won.
The platform bowed to one of the key demands made by Brazil’s supreme court appointing a legal representative in the country. It also paid outstanding fines and took down user accounts that the court had ordered to be removed on the basis that they threatened the country’s democracy.
However, the battle is not quite over. The supreme court said X had not filed the proper documentation showing that it had appointed Rachel de Oleveria Conceicao as its Brazilian representative. It gave the company five days to present documents validating her appointment,
Musk has been at loggerheads with supreme court justice Alexandre de Moraes since April after he ordered the company to take down more than 100 social media accounts that had been questioning whether the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro had really lost the election in 2022.
The Verge reported Brazilian fan account owners might have a reason to rejoice, as X could be returning to Brazil. According to the New York Times, in a court filing Friday night, the company agreed to abide by the Supreme Court’s request in order to have the countrywide ban lifted.
The company has spent the last three weeks fighting the ban and continuing to distribute content from members of the far right community in Brazil. This led to X being blocked by Brazilian ISPs, and eventually trying to get around the blocks with some help from Cloudflare.
In my opinion, Elon Musk could potentially have decided to go along with the Brazilian supreme court. Things could have been easier for him if he simply complied with what the Brazilian supreme court asked of him.