X is coming back online in Brazil after officials lifted a ban that left the service offline for five weeks. Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes said regulators could “take steps to resume the platform’s service” as the company had complied with the court’s demands.
The order temporarily puts an end to a long-running dispute between X and Elon Musk’s Moraes. Moraes had demanded that X block certain accounts in Brazil, which the company had described as “censorship orders.” Also the dispute, in which the Brazilian bank accounts were frozen after X initially cooperated with the Supreme Court’s demands. The company eventually relented by blocking the accounts in question and almost paying fines.
“X is proud to return to Brazil. Giving tens of millions of Brazilians access to our indispensable platform has been critical throughout this process,” the company wrote in . “We will continue to defend freedom of expression, within the limits of the law, wherever we operate.”
While the impasse is now over, X’s disruption in Brazil has given at least one rival a boost: Bluesky. The service, which started as a project at Twitter under former CEO Jack Dorsey, said it added more than just new users in the days immediately following the ban.