X briefly accessible again in Brazil: Technical maneuver or coincidence?

Elon Musk's social networking platform X was temporarily accessible in Brazil on Wednesday, despite a judicial ban imposed by the country. The brief access was apparently due to a change in cloud service providers to Cloudflare, which some Brazilian officials interpreted as a deliberate circumvention of the ban. The switch enabled some users to access X without using a virtual private network (VPN), which had been explicitly prohibited by Brazil's highest court for accessing the network. A spokesperson for X stated that the company had switched cloud providers after the previous infrastructure in Latin America became inaccessible to its own employees. However, he emphasized that the "unintentional and temporary service restoration for Brazilian users" was merely an incidental effect of this technical adjustment. "While we expect the platform to become inaccessible in Brazil again soon, we remain committed to working with the Brazilian government to enable a swift return for the people in Brazil," added the spokesperson. The brief restoration of access to X highlights the technical challenges that state authorities face when attempting to block specific websites. The blockage of X in Brazil, where the network has more than 20 million users, occurred on August 31 through a controversial court order, after the company refused to appoint a legal representative in the country – a measure required under Brazilian law. The decision marks a dramatic escalation in the conflict between Elon Musk and Chief Justice Alexandre de Moraes, following Musk's public criticism of court demands to remove certain accounts allegedly linked to far-right individuals and groups accused of spreading misinformation. In protest against the judicial orders, Musk also closed the company's office in Brazil. Abrint, the Brazilian Association of Internet and Telecommunications Providers, stated that the switch to Cloudflare significantly complicates the application's blockage. Unlike previous systems that used specific, blockable IP addresses, the new system uses dynamic IPs that constantly change and are often shared with other legitimate services. Blocking Cloudflare would thus not only affect X but also a range of other services, potentially impacting the internet as a whole. Cloudflare and the Brazilian communications authority declined to comment.