Elon Musk’s SpaceX satellite provider Starlink has said it intends to comply with Brazil’s Supreme Court order to block access to the X social network in the country, despite previously telling the country’s regulator it refused to do so.
Image source: Mariia Shalabaieva / unsplash.com
Starlink has been caught in a standoff between Musk and the Brazilian government, with Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes previously ordering the satellite operator’s local accounts frozen to pay fines against Musk’s social network X. “Despite the illegal actions taken against Starlink in blocking our assets, we will comply with the order to block access to X in Brazil,” the operator said on its social media page. Starlink has more than 200,000 customers in Brazil.
Earlier, Brazil’s telecoms regulator Anatel said Starlink had informed it that it would not comply with Moraes’ order to block access to X on its network. But the agency later said Starlink had backed down and told the regulator it would implement the blocking in the coming hours, a process that had already begun. Last week, Judge Moraes ordered all telecom operators in the country to block access to X because it had no legal representative in the country; the ruling was later upheld by a panel of Supreme Court judges.
Starlink said it had filed a lawsuit in Brazil’s Supreme Court, calling the freezing of its accounts and the ban on financial transactions in the country “grossly illegal.” The company, however, missed a deadline to file a new appeal of the court’s decision to freeze its accounts, and it is unclear what legal tool it will use to seek an overturn of the decision.
The incident erupted when Moraes demanded that X block accounts involved in an investigation into posts that distorted the news agenda and incited hatred. Musk viewed the order as an attempt at censorship and closed the company’s offices in Brazil, but the social network continued to operate in the country until Moraes ordered its blocking and imposed steep fines on users who tried to circumvent it.
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Source: 3dnews.ru
