The Brazilian Supreme Court is set to impose a fine of $1 million a day on two of Elon Musk's companies, X and Starlink, after the former partially went back online on Wednesday despite being banned in the country.
The social media platform became available on Wednesday after it switched third-party cloud providers, allowing users to go online without a VPN, something the country's high court also prohibited.
While X said the move was inadvertent, some officials told the Financial Times that they believe it to be a technical maneuver to circumvent the ban. "While we expect the platform to be inaccessible again in Brazil soon, we continue efforts to work with the Brazilian government to return very soon for the people of Brazil," the company said in a statement.
Brazil's communications regulator Anatel also said the move was deliberate, and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who has spearheaded efforts to crack down on the platform, issued a summons notice to the company and demanded it suspends its activities again.
X must "immediately suspend the use of its new accesses through the CDN Cloudflare, Fastly and EdgeUno servers and other similar ones, created to circumvent the court decision to block the platform in national territory, under penalty of a daily fine of R$5mn," or roughly $1 million US dollars, read a passage of the document.
The fines start on Thursday and add to the more than $3.3 million that the Supreme Court has already seized from two accounts, one of which belongs to Starlink, the satellite-based internet service, to pay for previous fines.
"After the payment of the full amount that was owed, the justice (de Moraes) considered there was no need to keep the bank accounts frozen and ordered the immediate unfreezing of bank accounts/financial assets," the Brazilian Supreme Court said.
Legal analysts consulted by The Associated Press disagreed with the court's decision, saying both companies are different and one should not be held accountable for the debt of another. De Moraes, however, argued they are both part of a "de facto economic group."
De Moraes has said the platform will continue to be blocked until the company complies with the request to appoint a legal representative in the country. Musk, on his end, has been using the platform to repeatedly blast de Moraes, accusing him of being a dictator and abusing his powers.
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