Elon Musk abandons his fight in Brazil

X’s lawyers said the company would comply with court orders in filings filed Friday, according to The New York Times. The Brazilian court on Saturday gave X five days to submit official documents confirming he will comply.

It’s a notable capitulation by Musk, who saw the battle as an ideological one over free speech. Since buying Twitter in 2022 and then rebranding it, Musk has fashioned himself as a free speech absolutist. He fired most of Twitter’s trust and safety team and fought with authorities in several countries over efforts to enforce content moderation standards.

That’s how he ended up in a month-long and expensive battle with Brazil’s Supreme Court. The court initially asked X to remove accounts associated with extremist groups involved in disinformation campaigns in favor of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s ousted far-right president.

At one point during the back-and-forth, Musk said in an X post that he was lifting the restrictions because “principles matter more than profit.”

Musk posted on X a dozen times Saturday morning, but did not address the news from Brazil. The nationwide ban, however, posed a serious threat to X’s bottom line.

Former X users have migrated en masse to some of X’s biggest competitors, such as Meta’s Threads. The ban was also a threat to the company’s crucial advertising revenue.

There was also the issue of millions of fines.

While X initially agreed to comply with court orders, he later ignored them, so Brazilian Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes threatened Musk with an obstruction of justice investigation and slapped some hefty fines on any accounts X restored.

The court also began fining Starlink, Musk’s satellite provider, which initially refused to block X but later relented. The court later fined X nearly $1 million a day when the platform was temporarily restored for some users last week.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.