It looks like Elon Musk’s battle with Brazil’s Supreme Court over content moderation concerns on X may finally be drawing to a close, a week after the social media platform agreed to comply with orders from Brazil’s high court.
There’s just a matter of the outstanding bills.
Reuters reported on Friday that the Brazilian court hit X with one last fine of $1.8 million — added to existing fines of $3.4 million — over a brief period when access to X was temporarily available again for Brazilian users despite being banned in the country.
The outstanding $5.2 million worth of fines must be paid before access to the site can be reinstated in full across the country.
Representatives for X did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Two experts in international corporate law told BI that settling the outstanding fines may finally end the fight over court orders that Musk argued amounted to censorship.
The back-and-forth between Musk and Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes became contentious as it dragged on for the majority of this year. Musk repeatedly lobbed personal insults at de Moraes and refused to comply with orders to remove accounts on the platform that de Moraes said had been methodically spreading misinformation supporting ousted far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro.
In response, de Moraes banned X from operating in Brazil, threatened to arrest its legal representative in the country, and ordered the seizure of $3 million from frozen financial accounts belonging to X and SpaceX’s Starlink to settle fines levied against the social media platform.
With the latest $1.8 million fine, de Moraes is “making a final demand on Elon Musk,” Sérgio Botinha, an international business lawyer in Brazil, told Business Insider.
“He’s making Elon Musk dance now,” Botinha said. “And he’s saying, ‘Well, you had defiance, but you’ve fulfilled the orders now. You have a legal representative, but there are these details that you still have to do, and if you do it — paying the fines and giving up on your appeals — I will free X in Brazil.’”
Botinha said that, while it’s impossible to say whether de Moraes has responded particularly harshly toward Musk due to the personal attacks the billionaire directed at him, the judge has knowingly attracted controversy with his handling of the challenges with Musk — and he’s not likely to let up now.
If Musk continued to challenge de Moraes, it would be “illogical,” Botinha added.
Greg Barnett, an American lawyer who helps US clients solve business and legal problems in Brazil, agreed that Musk’s saga of challenging de Moraes is likely over.
“I say that because X has rehired the law firm they had before, it has removed X accounts that Moraes had ordered it to remove, and everything suggests that X is willing to comply in order to be able to operate again in Brazil,” Barnett said.
The choice to comply now, after months of pointed refusal, probably isn’t a coincidence, Barnett added.
“You’re going to have an election in Brazil coming up pretty soon,” Barnett noted. “And I can only imagine that X is going to want or Musk is going to want to be able to reach users in Brazil, so there’s an extra incentive to do it now.”
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