Supreme Court docket choose Alexandre de Moraes described the corporate as having dedicated a “trick” in re-enabling entry for some customers.
He fined X and Mr Musk’s different firm, the web satellite tv for pc agency Starlink, greater than $920,000 (£695,000) for every day X operates in Brazil.
Nevertheless it’s unclear if the court docket can implement cost of the positive. Mr Musk’s companies have beforehand ignored Brazilian court docket orders, together with the demand which led to the social media website being banned within the first place in August.
Explaining the sudden entry for some customers on Wednesday, X stated a change of community suppliers had “resulted in an inadvertent and non permanent service restoration to Brazilian customers”.
“Whereas we anticipate the platform to be inaccessible once more in Brazil quickly, we proceed efforts to work with the Brazilian authorities to return very quickly for the folks of Brazil,” an X spokesperson stated in a press release.
The corporate’s clarification had caught some observers unexpectedly.
“All the things that occurred throughout the day led us to imagine that it was on function,” stated Basílio Rodriguez Pérez, advisor to ABRINT, the nation’s main commerce group for Web Service Suppliers (ISP).
ABRINT stated X moved to servers hosted by Cloudflare, and that the positioning gave the impression to be utilizing dynamic web protocol (IP) addresses that change consistently, indicating to him that the change in entry to Brazilian customers was purposeful.
Against this, the earlier system had relied on particular IP addresses that could possibly be extra simply blocked.
Basílio Rodriguez Pérez, ABRINT advisor, stated these dynamic IP addresses is also linked to vital providers inside Brazil.
“Many of those IP [addresses] are shared with different respectable providers, resembling banks and huge web platforms, making it not possible to dam an IP [address] with out affecting different providers.”
That features the service PIX, which hundreds of thousands of Brazilians rely upon to make digital funds.
Regardless of the change, some specialists stated Cloudflare was well-positioned to assist Brazil reinforce the ban.
“Truly, I feel the ban can be much more efficient if Cloudflare actually cooperates with the federal government,” stated Felipe Autran, a constitutional lawyer in Brasilia, the nation’s capital.
“I feel they may, since they’re such an enormous supplier for a lot of Brazilian enterprises and likewise the federal government.”
Cloudflare declined to remark when contacted by the BBC.