X resumed operations in Brazil earlier this week, three weeks after the country's Supreme Court had ordered the platform to be blocked. As a result, the court imposed a hefty fine on X Corp. of nearly $1 million per day for remaining active in Brazil.
However, Cloudflare’s CEO, Matthew Prince, told TechCrunch that X's return in Brazil was purely coincidental. He explained that the platform wasn’t trying to bypass the block but was simply transitioning between IT vendors.
Cloudflare had recently secured a deal to provide cloud services to X in multiple regions, including Brazil. Prior to Cloudflare, X used Fastly, another cloud provider, and as X gradually moved to Cloudflare, the IP addresses changed. This shift interfered with how Brazilian internet service providers were blocking X.
Prince emphasized that there was no intention to help X evade Brazil's restrictions. The timing of the change, which mainly involved traffic redirection in Latin America, was just a coincidence.
Prince humorously acknowledged the situation, calling it an unforeseen event where his team’s success in securing the contract had unwittingly placed them in a complex situation with global political overtones. This comes as Elon Musk had previously tried to circumvent Brazil’s ban, including an attempt to use his Starlink satellites, though that effort was later abandoned.
A statement from X explained that the platform’s network provider change, prompted by the Brazil shutdown, caused disruption across Latin America. Whether this timing is purely coincidental remains up for debate.
Despite the situation, Brazilian regulators noted Cloudflare's cooperation in helping re-enforce the block on X. The original block was based on restricting access to certain IP addresses, but when X switched to Cloudflare, the block was unintentionally lifted. Prince maintained that Cloudflare was unaware this would happen and doesn’t believe X was trying to bypass the block intentionally. He also criticized Brazil’s blocking method, saying it was fragile and could have been easily circumvented even without the switch to Cloudflare.
Post a Comment