Some Brazilian users regained access to social network X on Wednesday despite a nationwide ban ordered by the Supreme Court, after the company apparently changed the way its servers are accessed.
However, the new form of access may not last long.
Judge Alexandre de Moraes ordered last month a nationwide X blockade after several months of tensions with the company’s owner, billionaire Elon Musk, regarding issues such as freedom of expression, far-right accounts and misinformation. De Moraes also ordered fines for those who use virtual private networks (VPNs) to access the platform.
That made X virtually inaccessible across the country until Wednesday, when an Associated Press journalist was among those able to re-enter the platform. The number of posts from Brazil rose from 939,000 on Tuesday to more than 2 million by Wednesday afternoon, according to data from analytics firm Bites.
Experts examining X’s IP addresses — numerical designations that identify a site’s location on the Internet — said there are signs the company has begun funneling its Brazilian users through the servers of Cloudflare, a content delivery network, to those of X.
“The service that Elon Musk’s social network has started to use works as a ‘digital shield’ that protects the company’s servers,” explained Pedro Diogenes, technical director for Latin America at CLM, a distributor focused on cybersecurity. The service acts as an intermediary between users and X servers, filtering traffic and preventing the original IP address from being recognized, Diogenes told the AP.
Brazil’s National Telecommunications Agency, Anatel, said in a statement that it is analyzing the situation and will report its findings to the STF, stressing that there has been no change in De Moraes’ ruling. A panel of judges subsequently upheld his decision, although it has not yet been submitted to the full court. His decision to sanction VPN use, in particular, has generated unfavorable reactions, including from the Brazilian Bar Association.
The STF declined to comment on possible measures it could implement. X stated on its platform that the blockage in Brazil affected service in Latin America in general, which is why it changed its network provider.
“This change resulted in an involuntary and temporary reset for Brazilian users,” it said in a statement Wednesday evening. “We expect the platform to be inaccessible again soon.”
Hours earlier, former President Jair Bolsonaro celebrated the return of the social network with a post from his account. He has sided with Musk in the dispute with De Moraes and tried to show that the order was an act of censorship by an excessively rigorous judge.
Some Brazilian X users also celebrated the return of the platform, with several of them addressing De Moraes directly, telling him that they do not use a VPN. So far, there have been no reports of fines being imposed on individuals for VPN use.
Cloudflare, a security company that prides itself on serving websites regardless of their content, has a history of protecting portals other companies won’t touch — but only up to a point. In 2017, for example, it took down the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer after a deadly clash occurred during a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. And in 2022, it took down Kiwi Farms, a site that hosted stalkers, saying it posed an “immediate threat to human life.”
But X is a mainstream social network — even if it can host some extremist content — and it’s not yet clear whether the Brazilian ban would be enough to prompt San Francisco-based Cloudflare to disassociate itself.
However, Cloudflare has a reputation for cooperating with governments, so it could comply with an STF order to stop acting as an intermediary for X, David Nemer, a technology anthropology specialist at the University of Virginia, told the AP.
Ordering internet service providers to block Cloudflare would be impossible, as thousands of Brazilian companies rely on it, Nemer previously wrote on Bluesky, another social network.
A person close to Cloudflare, who was not authorized to speak publicly about a business relationship, said the network service provider did nothing specifically to help X circumvent the ban imposed in Brazil. Rather, X recently switched from its old provider to Cloudflare, which could be one reason the block isn’t working. This person added that the workaround is unlikely to last long.
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