By Marie Boran
Technology Reporter
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Elon Musk's X (formerly Twitter) and Pavel Durov's Telegram have both announced significant policy changes and compliance measures in response to legal pressures from the governments of Brazil and France, respectively.
After weeks of defiance against Brazil's Supreme Court, X has abruptly changed its stance. According to a court filing on Friday night, reported by the New York Times, X's lawyers stated that the company had complied with orders from Brazil's Supreme Court in hopes of lifting the block on its site in the country.
The move comes after X had been banned in Brazil for three weeks after its refusal to comply with court orders to remove certain accounts accused of spreading disinformation.
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The X ban was disrupted briefly last week when some users in Brazil unexpectedly regained access to the platform. This temporary restoration of service occurred on Wednesday, September 13, when X switched to a new network provider, Cloudflare.
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An X representative stated: "Following the Brazilian ban, we were forced to switch network providers to ensure continued quality service for our Latin American user base. This transition inadvertently led to a brief and unplanned restoration of service in Brazil."
The restoration was short-lived, as Brazil's Supreme Court quickly responded by ordering X not to circumvent the block, threatening a daily fine of 5 million reais (approximately $921,727) for non-compliance.
Musk, who had previously criticized the court's demands as "illegal" and referred to Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes as a "dictator" and "Brazil's Darth Vader," has so far remained silent about this new reversal.
The compliance measures taken by X include: taking down accounts ordered to be removed by Justice de Moraes, paying outstanding fines, and naming a new formal representative in Brazil.
Brazil's Supreme Court confirmed X's actions in a filing on Saturday but stated that the company had not filed the proper paperwork, giving X five days to send further documentation.
The decision marks a significant shift for Musk, who is a self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist." Brazil, with an estimated 20 million X users, represents one of the platform's largest international markets.
Meanwhile, Telegram, another platform known until recently for its minimal content moderation, has announced a crackdown on rule violators. This comes after the August 24 arrest of Telegram's founder and CEO, Pavel Durov, in France on charges of failing to act against criminals using the app.
Durov said the messaging app would, in certain circumstances, hand over identifiable information to the authorities upon request for IP addresses and phone numbers of users in response to valid legal requests. He stated: "We've made it clear that the IP addresses and phone numbers of those who violate our rules can be disclosed to relevant authorities in response to valid legal requests."
In the weeks following his arrest, Durov initially announced some changes to the messaging app, including the removal of the People Nearby feature, which the founder alleged "was used by less than 0.1% of Telegram users, but had issues with bots and scammers." New media uploads to Telegraph's stand-alone blogging were also disabled on the back of having "been misused by anonymous actors."
In an official statement on his Telegram channel on September 23, Durov introduced further changes.
"Over the last few weeks, a dedicated team of moderators, leveraging AI, has made Telegram Search much safer," he said. "All the problematic content we identified in Search is no longer accessible."
"We won't let bad actors jeopardize the integrity of our platform for almost a billion users," added the CEO.
While Telegram grapples with content moderation issues globally, it faces a different challenge in Ukraine. On Friday, according to the BBC, Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council (Rnbo) announced a ban on the use of Telegram on official devices issued to government and military personnel, as well as defense sector and critical infrastructure employees.
The ban comes as a response to perceived security threats posed by Russia. The Rnbo stated: "Telegram is actively used by the enemy for cyberattacks, the distribution of phishing and malicious software, user geolocation and missile strike correction."
Newsweek reached out to X via email for comment and to Telegram via its Press Team channel.
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