Less than a month after Brazil's Supreme Court ordered Twitter's "immediate and complete suspension" in the country, owner Elon Musk has caved and complied with its regulations despite weeks of insisting he wouldn't.
Musk initially said he had "refused to obey" what he called "illegal orders" to censor voices on his social network. Mr. Musk had dismissed local employees and refused to pay fines. The court responded by blocking Twitter across Brazil three weeks ago.
Brazil is one of Twitter’s most important international markets, with more than 20 million registered users. Since Twitter has been blocked, Brazilians have signed up in droves for other social networks such as Bluesky and Threads.
In a court filing on Friday night, the company’s lawyers said that Twitter (which Musk renamed X, but everyone still calls it Twitter) had complied with orders from the Brazilian Supreme Court in the hopes that the court would lift a block on the site.
As part of the agreement, Twitter's lawyers said the company had suspended accounts that a Brazilian justice ordered removed because the judge said they threatened Brazil’s democracy, which Musk had promised his followers he would never do.
Musk also complied with the justice’s other demands, including paying fines and naming a new formal representative in the country, the lawyers said.
Brazil’s Supreme Court took $2 million from another of Musk's companies, the satellite internet service Starlink, to cover fines it had issued against Twitter.
Oddly, Musk hadn't mentioned anything on his Twitter account about complying by press time Saturday.