X calls return to Brazil amid ban "inadvertent"
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The Brazilian flag is displayed on a laptop screen behind Elon Musk's X account, which is displayed on a phone screen. Photo illustration: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Elon Musk's X became available to many users in Brazil on Wednesday after an update to the social media site's communications network inadvertently bypassed a ban imposed by the country's top judge last month.
The big picture: Reuters notes that some Brazilian users who flocked back to the site thought Musk had sought to circumvent Justice Alexandre de Moraes' ruling prohibiting X in Latin America's largest nation, but the site's
global government affairs team said that its return was "inadvertent."
Driving the news: The Brazilian Association of Internet and Telecommunications Providers (ABRINT) said in a post on its site that the incident occurred after an X app update, as the platform transitioned to servers hosted by Cloudflare.
- The move to Cloudflare makes app blocking much more complicated, as the new system uses dynamic internet protocols (IPs) that change constantly.
- These IPs are shared with other services, such as banks and large internet platforms, "making it impossible to block an IP without affecting other services," ABRINT said.
- Blocking Cloudflare would mean shutting out not only X, but also other services that rely on this infrastructure, which ABRINT said could negatively affect the internet in Brazil.
What they're saying: "When X was shut down in Brazil, our infrastructure to provide service to Latin America was no longer accessible to our team," X's global government affairs team said in a post on the platform formerly known as Twitter.
- "To continue providing optimal service to our users, we changed network providers," per the post.
- "This change resulted in an inadvertent and temporary service restoration to Brazilian users," the team added.
- "While we expect the platform to be inaccessible again shortly, we continue efforts to work with the Brazilian government to return very soon for the people of Brazil."
State of play: Moraes imposed the ban last month after X refused to comply with his orders to appoint a legal representative for the platform in Brazil.
- Musk and Moraes have clashed since April, when the judge announced he was investigating the billionaire for obstruction of justice after Musk vowed to defy a court order blocking certain accounts on the platform amid a misinformation crackdown in Brazil.
- Musk has accused the judge of "destroying" free speech "for political purposes."
Go deeper: Brazil lifts bank account freeze on Musk's companies after $3 million fine
