Brazil’s closure of
Rio de Janeiro:
Elon Musk’s social network
Some Brazilian users were surprised to regain access to the platform, formerly Twitter, from their phones after a Supreme Court judge ordered its closure last month following a legal standoff with Musk.
The Brazilian Association of Internet and Telecommunications Providers (ABRINT) explained that the return of X was due to an update of the app to Cloudflare software that uses constantly changing IP addresses.
The previous system used specific IPs, which act as home addresses for servers or computers and were easier to block.
The changes “make blocking the app much more complicated,” ABRINT said.
Many of the dynamic IPs “are shared with other legitimate services, such as banks and major internet platforms, making it impossible to block an IP without impacting other services,” the group said.
“Internet providers are in a delicate position,” waiting for technical analyzes and instructions from Brazil’s telecommunications agency, ABRINT said.
Brazil’s closure of
The social media platform has more than 22 million users in Brazil.
Judge Alexandre de Moraes last month ordered that X be banned after Musk refused to remove dozens of right-wing accounts and then failed to appoint a new legal representative in the country as ordered.
Moraes has clashed repeatedly with the South African-born billionaire after making it his mission to crack down on disinformation.
Last week, he ordered the transfer of about $3 million from Musk’s companies to pay fines incurred by X.
Moraes also froze the assets of
Musk reacted angrily to the suspension and called Moraes a ‘dictator’.
Moraes also ordered that those who use “technological subterfuge” such as virtual private networks (VPNs) to access the blocked site could be fined up to $9,000.
“Judge Alexandre de Moraes: I didn’t use a VPN to get in here, I just opened the app for my daily abstinence ritual and saw that it worked,” one user wrote on X on Wednesday.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)