Elon Musk’s X has paid millions of dollars in fines in Brazil to settle a row with a judge who banned the platform in its biggest Latin American market over disinformation, but the platform transferred the money into the wrong account, Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who ordered the shutdown of the social media site in August, said on Friday.
X, formerly known as Twitter, racked up US$5.2 million in fines for failing to comply with a series of court orders.
Moraes confirmed that the social network had paid the full amount, but into a different account from the one on the court order and said it had ordered that the funds be immediately redirected.
Photo: Reuters
Moraes blocked X on Aug. 31 after Musk refused to remove dozens of right-wing accounts accused of spreading disinformation and failed to name a new legal representative in the country as ordered.
X, which had 22 million users in Brazil before Moraes blocked it, hopes that payment of the penalties would settle the dispute. Last week it said it had complied with the court’s other demands, including the appointment of a legal representative in Brazil.
The clash between Musk and Moraes morphed into a high-stakes battle, which was closely followed around the globe as a test of both freedom of expression and the fight against disinformation.
A furious Musk hit out at Moraes over the ban calling him an “evil dictator” and dubbing him “Voldemort” after the villain from the Harry Potter series.
However, in the past few days he had been notably more muted on the subject and X has appeared eager to do whatever necessary to have the ban lifted.
The platform had briefly resumed service in Brazil in last month after a technical workaround, which it claimed was “inadvertent.”
It went back offline again after Moraes threatened it with further fines.
X’s fight with Moraes began during Brazil’s 2022 presidential election campaign, when Moraes ordered the company to deactivate accounts of followers of failed far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro.
The standoff escalated following attacks by Bolsonaro supporters on federal buildings in Brasilia after the inauguration of Bolsonaro’s leftist rival Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as president in January last year.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress