• by Colin Kirkland , September 30, 2024

Since it agreed to comply with Brazil's court orders last week, X must now pay $5 million in fines to reinstate itself in the region and resume service to over 20 million users.

At the beginning of the month, X was banned in Brazil after the social-media platform failed to name a legal representative in the region and refused to comply with a court order to suppress the accounts of seven commentators who were believed to be spreading false reports and hate speech about the outcome of Brazil's most recent presidential election.

The accounts in question belonged to government officials who supported former President Jair Bolsonaro, claiming that the election was “stolen.”

The company's initial failure to comply with orders issued by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes and four other justices involved X owner Elon Musk, who supported Bolsonaro and went on a public tirade against Moraes, calling him a “dictator” and claiming that the judge was “destroying” free speech “for political purposes.”

After being banned in Brazil, X lost over 20 million users and the subsequent ad revenue. After three weeks of losses, X decided to comply with the original requests, agreeing to block the accounts in question and naming a new official representative in the country, in addition to paying fines.

On Friday, Moraes stated that in order to resume service in Brazil, X must pay a total of $3.4 million in pending fines that were previously ordered by the court, as well as $1.8 million in fines related to a brief period of time last week when X became available again for some users in Brazil.

According to a report by Reuters, X will likely pay the fines, but may challenge the additional $1.8 million imposed by the court after the platform was banned.

Overall, X’s absence in Brazil -- rooted in Musk's “free speech” initiative -- over the past month has been costly, resulting in a massive decline in the platform's engagement numbers in the region, while also losing significant ad dollars and inadvertently pushing more users to competing platforms, like BlueSky, which quickly saw an “all-time-high” for activity, plus millions of new users.