Some Brazilians were surprised on Wednesday to find themselves again able to access Twitter’s former mobile app, via cellular and Wi-Fi, while access remained impossible for other users, according to what we told Agence France-Presse.
On August 30, the platform was banned in Latin America’s largest country, after a long confrontation between its owner, American billionaire Elon Musk, and Brazilian Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes.
This powerful and controversial judge ordered the blocking of the platform after X, which is used by 22 million people in Brazil (more than 10 percent of the population), ignored a series of judicial decisions related to the fight against misinformation.
The Brazilian Association of Internet Service Providers (Aprinet) explained how the partial resumption of X platform services was possible from a technical standpoint.
“The X app was updated overnight, resulting in a major change to its structure,” it said in a statement.
According to the association, X’s use of Cloudflare, a cybersecurity company that uses two IP addresses that constantly change, “makes blocking the app more complicated.” Previously, these IP addresses (which identify internet users’ devices) were static and could be easily blocked.
“Many of these IP addresses are shared with other legitimate services, such as banks and large platforms, making it impossible to block an IP address without affecting other services,” she explained.
The suspension of the platform in Brazil, where it had about 22 million users, has sparked a heated debate in Latin America’s largest country and beyond about the limits of freedom of expression on social media.
Alexander Caramelo, a communications professor at the Gotulio Vargas Foundation, told AFP that the return of the X platform “showed the failure” of the Supreme Court justices because it “shows that they do not know what they are doing, and they are ignorant of what is technically possible.”
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