X Says It Inadvertently Evaded Brazil Ban After Network Switch

X CEO Elon Musk during the UK Artificial Intelligence Safety Summit at Bletchley Park, in central England, on Nov. 1, 2023. Leon Neal/AFP via Getty Images

Elon Musk’s X became accessible to many users in Brazil on Sept. 18 after an update to its communications network, which the company said inadvertently circumvented a block order by the country’s highest court.

Last month, Brazil Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered all telecom providers in the country to block access to X, escalating a months-long dispute between X owner Elon Musk and the Latin American country over free speech and posts that the judge characterized as misinformation.

On Sept. 18, Brazilians managed to return to the platform after X changed network providers.

However, X’s Global Affairs team, in a Sept. 19 post, said that it expects the platform to become inaccessible again.

“When X was shut down in Brazil, our infrastructure to provide service to Latin America was no longer accessible to our team. To continue providing optimal service to our users, we changed network providers. This change resulted in an inadvertent and temporary service restoration to Brazilian users,” it wrote.

“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.”

Brazil’s Supreme Court told X not to try to circumvent the ruling and said it was at risk of a daily fine of 5 million reais ($921,726.95), according to a Sept. 19 court filing.

3rd-Party Cloud Services

The Brazilian Association of Internet and Telecommunications Providers (Abrint) said that the X update had routed some Brazilian users through third-party cloud services outside the country, allowing them to access the platform even without a virtual private network (VPN).

Brazil, which has around 25 million users, blocks X through DNS (domain name system) and IP (internet protocol) blocking. DNS blocking prevents the website from being found, while IP blocking stops all traffic to the website’s server, making it, at least to date, inaccessible in the country.

There are also daily fines of $8,900 for anyone caught bypassing the ban using VPNs, which allow people to access the internet as if they were located in a different country.

Brazil’s telecom regulator Anatel, which is responsible for implementing the court ruling, said it was working to notify content delivery network providers and telecom companies to again block access to X.

Basilio Perez, a board member at Abrint, told Reuters that blocking cloud access is complex, however, and could jeopardize government agencies and financial services providers.

Free Speech

Last week, free speech campaigners told The Epoch Times that Brazil’s enforcement of the X ban through fines for using VPNs is representative of the ongoing struggle between internet freedom and government regulation.

X is banned in countries with severe human rights restrictions, such as China, Russia, North Korea, Turkmenistan, Burma, Iran, and Pakistan.

The U.S. faith-based legal advocacy organization Alliance Defending Freedom International warned that Brazilian authorities have created “one of the most oppressive cultures of censorship in the Western Hemisphere—one which could spread across the West.”

“Heavy-handed government censors will use whatever tool [is] at their disposal to chill speech—and as Brazil shows us that includes fining people for using VPNs to access disfavored platforms,” ADF’s senior vice president of corporate engagement, Jeremy Tedesco, told The Epoch Times via email.

“This reminds us that the censor knows no bounds and that we must resist every attempt to trample our precious free speech rights.”

Toby Young, founder and general secretary of The Free Speech Union, an organization dedicated to protecting free speech in the UK, told The Epoch Times by email that he believes it is probable that VPNs are becoming a new battleground for internet freedom and regulation.

At the time, a spokesman from U.S. nonprofit Unredacted, which provides free services to help people evade censorship, told The Epoch Times that VPN usage surveillance depends on whether telecom companies or ISPs are monitoring and reporting user activity to the government, and it’s currently unclear whether that is happening.

“Subterfuge of their censorship is now punishable. It seems likely that they may pursue some means of looking for people who use a VPN to circumvent the block, whether that’s a technical or non-technical process,” the spokesman said.

Reuters contributed to this report.