On Saturday, the Brazilian Supreme Court ordered Elon Musk’s social media platform X to provide documents affirming to the legitimacy of its new legal counsel in Brazil. The attorney of platform X now stated that they will stand by the orders of court in order to be allowed to carry on with business as usual in Brazil.
After failing to abide by the top court’s rulings regarding the moderation of hate speech on the social media platform, X was shut down in Brazil towards the end of August.
However, X representatives have begun to openly express their willingness to answer the court’s orders in the last few days, despite the firm’s earlier declaration that it would not comply.
On Friday, Attorneys of X in response to a significant order from the court, announced that the platform has designated a legal representation in Brazil.
Judge Alexandre de Moraes of the Supreme Court granted X five days to produce commercial registers and other documents demonstrating that X had legitimately appointed Rachel de Oliveira Conceicao as its legal representative in Brazil. The ruling was made on Saturday.
Under Brazilian law, international businesses must have a legal representation in order to conduct business there. Locally, the representative would take on the firm’s legal obligations.
Up until the middle of August, when it made the decision to close its operations and lay off employees in Brazil, X had a legal representative there.
The lawsuit came after a protracted legal battle between Musk and Moraes, during which the billionaire accused the company of censoring hate speech and demanded that it comply with court orders.
Additionally, X is also required to choose a legal representation. Furthermore, Brazil’s highest court ordered that X block specific accounts that were the subject of a hate speech and disinformation investigation, as well as pay fines exceeding $3 million in order to have the ban lifted.
At the beginning X had stated that it would not accept the “illegal” orders, but not long ago, its attorneys have said that the platform will pay the fines it is due and has begun to block the ordered accounts.
Because the investigation is private, the identities of the accounts that X was instructed to block were not immediately clear.
On Wednesday, X was temporarily available to a large number of Brazilian customers due to a communications network update that got around the court-mandated restriction, in spite of the banning.
