Brazil slaps ₹7.7 crore penalty on Elon Musk after X’s brief return despite ban

Elon Musk, the owner of social media platforms X and Starlink, was reportedly fined $920,000, equivalent to ₹7.7 crore, by a Brazilian court on Thursday. This came a day after users were able to access the platform despite the ban. According to a BBC report, the company attributed the access to an unintended server switch.

On Wednesday, after the social media platform updated its servers within the country, the platform’s functionality was unintendedly restored for a brief period, the company said. During this short time interval, scores of Brazilian users swarmed the site. Access was subsequently blocked again.

On Thursday afternoon, the platform moved its service back to its previous provider, the ABRINT Internet Provider Association reported. ABRINT is Brazil's leading trade group for Internet Service Providers (ISP). The association observed the change while testing to block the new servers. “X's public DNS (Domain Name System) indicated a return,” BBC quoted ABRINT as saying.

ABRINT alleged that X moved to servers hosted by Cloudflare. According to ABRINT advisor Basílio Rodriguez Pérez, the whole incident was staged and said, “Everything that happened during the day led us to believe that it was on purpose,” reported BBC.

However, Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes termed the incident a "trick" to re-enable access for some users and imposed five million Brazillian Real's ($920,000; £695,000) penalty on X and internet satellite firm Starlink for violating the ban.

The latest order follows a history of the tech billionaire's companies defying Brazilian court rulings. The country imposed the ban on X last year in August after Elon Musk's firms ignored orders and some other Brazilian court rulings.

The social media platform, previously known as Twitter, described the sudden enabled access for some users on September 18 as a change of network providers that had “resulted in an inadvertent and temporary service restoration to Brazilian users.”

Following the incident, an X spokesperson issued a statement that said, “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," reported BBC.