X is coming back online in Brazil after officials lifted a ban that took the service offline for five weeks. Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes said Tuesday that regulators could “take steps to resume the platform's service” as the company had complied with the court’s demands.
The order for now ends a long-running dispute between Elon Musk’s X and Moraes. Moraes had demanded X block certain accounts in Brazil, which the company had described as “censorship orders.” The dispute also ensnared Starlink, which had its Brazilian bank accounts frozen after X initially refused to cooperate with the Supreme Court’s demands. The company eventually relented by blocking the accounts in question and paying close to $5 million in fines.
“X is proud to return to Brazil. Giving tens of millions of Brazilians access to our indispensable platform was paramount throughout this entire process,” the company wrote in a statement. “We will continue to defend freedom of speech, within the boundaries of the law, everywhere we operate.”
While the standoff is now over, X’s outage in Brazil helped boost at least one rival: Bluesky. The service, which began as a project at Twitter under former CEO Jack Dorsey, said it added more than 2 million new users in the days immediately following the ban.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/x-is-back-in-brazil-after-a-five-week-ban-231406758.html?src=rss