SAO PAULO — A judge of the Brazilian Supreme Court on Friday ordered the suspension of Elon Musk’s Social media giant X in Brazil after the tech billionaire refused to appoint a legal representative within the country, in response to a replica of the choice obtained by The Associated Press.
This move further escalates the months-long dispute between the 2 men over freedom of expression, right-wing extremist accounts and misinformation.
Judge Alexandre de Moraes warned Musk on Wednesday evening that X might be blocked in Brazil if he didn’t comply together with his request to appoint a representative, giving him 24 hours to achieve this. The company has not had a representative within the country for the reason that starting of this month.
In his ruling, de Moraes gave web service providers and app stores five days to dam access to X and said the platform would remain blocked until it complied together with his orders. He also said individuals or firms using virtual private networks (VPNs) to access X would face a every day tremendous of fifty,000 reais ($8,900).
“Elon Musk showed his total disregard for Brazilian sovereignty and especially for the judiciary by presenting himself as a true supranational entity, immune to the laws of each individual country,” de Moraes wrote.
Brazil is a crucial marketplace for X, which has struggled with a lack of advertisers since Musk bought the previous Twitter in 2022. About 40 million Brazilians, a couple of fifth of the population, access X no less than once a month, in response to market research group Emarketer.
Late Thursday, X posted on its official Global Government Affairs page that it expected de Moraes to shut down X “simply because we would not comply with his illegal orders to censor his political opponents.”
“When we tried to defend ourselves in court, Judge de Moraes threatened our Brazilian legal representative with jail time. Even after she resigned, he froze all of her bank accounts,” the corporate wrote. “Our appeals to his blatantly illegal actions were either dismissed or ignored. Judge de Moraes' colleagues on the Supreme Court are either unwilling or unable to stand up to him.”
X clashed with de Moraes because the corporate refused to comply with instructions to dam users.
Among the accounts that the platform has previously closed on Brazilian orders are MPs from former President Jair Bolsonaro's right-wing party and activists accused of undermining Brazilian democracy.
Musk, a self-described “champion of absolute freedom of expression,” has repeatedly claimed that the judge's actions amount to censorship, and his argument has been echoed by Brazil's political right. He has often insulted de Moraes on his platform, calling him a dictator and a tyrant.
De Moraes's defense team has argued that his actions against X were legal, supported by the vast majority of the court and aimed to guard democracy at a time when it’s under threat. His ruling on Friday relies on Brazilian law that requires foreign firms to have representation within the country in order that they might be notified when legal proceedings are underway against them.
Because operators are aware of the widely publicized stalemate and have an obligation to comply with an order from de Moraes, and doing so is simple, X might be offline as early as 12 hours after receiving the orders, says Luca Belli, coordinator of the Technology and Society Center on the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a university in Rio de Janeiro.
The shutdown will not be an isolated case in Brazil.
Individual Brazilian judges shut down Meta's WhatsApp, the country's most generally used messaging app, several times in 2015 and 2016 because the corporate refused to comply with police requests for user data. In 2022, de Moraes threatened the messaging app Telegram with a nationwide shutdown since it repeatedly ignored requests from Brazilian authorities to dam profiles and supply information. He ordered Telegram to appoint an area representative; the corporate eventually complied and remained online.
X and its predecessor Twitter have been banned in several countries, mostly in authoritarian regimes comparable to Russia, China, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Venezuela and Turkmenistan. Other countries comparable to Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt have also temporarily blocked X, mostly to crack down on dissent and unrest. Twitter was banned in Egypt after the Arab Spring uprisings, which some called the “Twitter Revolution,” but has since been allowed again.
A search on X on Friday found that lots of of Brazilian users were on the lookout for VPNs that would potentially allow them to proceed using the platform by making it appear as in the event that they were logging in from outside the country. It was not immediately clear how Brazilian authorities would police the practice and impose the fines cited by de Moraes.
Mariana de Souza Alves Lima, known by her name MariMoon, showed her 1.4 million followers on X that she was going to competing social network BlueSkyposted a screenshot and said: “That’s where I’m going.”
X said that the organization desired to publish de Moraes' “illegal demands” and the related court documents “in the interest of transparency.”
Also on Thursday evening, Starlink, Musk's satellite web service provider, announced on X that de Moraes had frozen his funds this week, stopping the corporate from accessing any transactions within the country where it has over 250,000 customers.
“This order is based on the unsubstantiated finding that Starlink should be responsible for the fines imposed – unconstitutionally – on X. It was issued in secret and without granting Starlink the due process guaranteed by the Brazilian Constitution. We intend to resolve the matter legally,” Starlink said in its statement.
Musk responded to people sharing the reports of the payment freeze, adding insults aimed toward de Moraes. “This guy @Alexandre is an outright criminal of the worst kind, posing as a judge,” he wrote.
Musk later posted on X that SpaceX, which operates Starlink, would supply free web service in Brazil “until the matter is resolved” because “we cannot receive payment but do not want to cut anyone off.”
In his decision, de Moraes said he ordered the freezing of Starlink's assets because X didn’t find the money for in its accounts to pay the increasing fines and on the grounds that the 2 firms were a part of the identical economic group.
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