Musk’s X Retreats, Pledging to Comply With Brazil Court Orders

(Bloomberg) — Elon Musk’s X social media platform will comply with all orders from Brazil’s Supreme Court, lawyers representing the company told the body a week after the billionaire said he would defy its judges and lift restrictions imposed on some accounts.

In a Saturday letter to top court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, attorneys representing the company formerly known as Twitter said it would adhere to orders that placed restrictions on some X accounts as part of probes into the spread of disinformation and hate speech online.

The reversal follows Moraes’s decision to open an investigation into Musk after the self-described free speech absolutist targeted the judge in a string of social media posts that accused him of censorship and called for his impeachment.

Telsa Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk At Atreju 2023

“X Brazil informs that all orders issued by this Supreme Court and the Superior Electoral Court remain and will continue to be fully complied with,” the lawyers wrote in the letter, which Bloomberg News obtained after it was first reported by Reuters.

Brazil’s Supreme Court has in recent years engaged in one of the world’s most aggressive responses to disinformation that it sees as a threat to democracy, with judges ordering sites like X to remove posts and user profiles and at times temporarily barring platforms from operating inside the country. Its efforts have intensified in the wake of the January 2023 insurrection attempt in Brazil’s capital that sought to undermine former President Jair Bolsonaro’s election defeat.

Moraes on April 7 opened an investigation into whether Musk had obstructed justice, saying in a document released by the court that he had “started a disinformation campaign” and that X is committing abuse of economic power to “illegally influence public opinion.” He also added Musk to a criminal investigation into anti-democratic acts by so-called “digital militias.”

Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent to X. The company has previously acceded to requests to restrict access to some content in other nations, including Turkey and India.

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