A Brazilian court, Thursday, slammed a fine of five million reais ($920,000; £695,000) against Elon Musk’s companies after some users in the South American country were able to access the social media platform X, breaching a subsisting ban imposed on it in August.
A report by the British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC, indicated that Brazilian users had swarmed the site on Wednesday after X updated how its servers within the country were accessed.
But the company said that the platform’s restoration was unintended. Then, hours later, it blocked it.
But the Brazilian court was not impressed by the company’s defence as it imposed the fined of five million reais ($920,000; £695,000) for breaching the ban.
Thursday afternoon, the company moved its service back to its previous provider on according to the ABRINT internet provider association, which said it noticed the change while testing to block the new servers.
X and Cloudflare have not yet confirmed the move, but ABRINT said X’s public DNS (Domain Name System) indicated a return.
Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes had described the company as having committed a “trick” in re-enabling access for some users.
He then fined X and Mr Musk’s other company, the internet satellite firm Starlink, more than $920,000 (£695,000) for each day X operates in Brazil.
But it’s unclear if the court can enforce payment of the fine or will seek payment now that service has been returned to its previous servers.
