Justice of the Supreme Court of Brazil on Friday ordered the suspension of Elon Musk social media giant X in Brazil after the tech billionaire refused to name a legal representative in the country, according to a copy of the decision seen by The Associated Press
The move escalates more months a dispute between two people through free speech, right-wing accounts and misinformation.
Justice Alexandre de Moraes had warned Musk on Wednesday night that X, formerly known as Twitter, could be blocked in Brazil if he failed to comply with his order to name a representative, and set a 24-hour deadline. The company did not have a representative in the country as of earlier this month.
Eraldo Peres / AP
In his ruling, de Moraes gave internet service providers and app stores five days to block access to X, and said the platforms would be blocked until they complied with his order. He also said that people or companies that use virtual private networks, or VPNs, to access X will be fined 50,000 reais, or $8,900 per day.
“Elon Musk shows disrespect for Brazilian sovereignty and, in particular, for the judiciary, setting himself up as a true supranational entity and immune to the laws of every country,” wrote de Moraes.
Brazil is an important market for X, which has struggled with the loss of advertisers since Musk bought it in 2022. The market research group Emarketer says that 40 million Brazilians, about a fifth of the population, access X at least once a month.
X has posted on the official Global Government Affairs page last Thursday that he expects X to be closed by de Moraes, “only because we will not follow illegal orders to censor political opponents.”
“When we tried to defend ourselves in court, Judge de Moraes threatened our Brazilian legal representative with prison. Even after he resigned, he froze all our bank accounts,” the company wrote. “Our challenges against actions that are clearly illegal are dismissed or ignored. Judge de Moraes’ colleagues at the Supreme Court are unwilling or unable to stand up to him.”
X has clashed with de Moraes because of his reluctance to comply with orders to block users.
Accounts previously blocked by the platform on Brazilian orders include members of parliament linked to former President Jair Bolsonaro’s right-wing party and activists accused of undermining Brazil’s democracy.
Musk, who has declared “absolute freedom of speech,” has repeatedly claimed the justice act is censorship, and his arguments have been reinforced by the Brazilian political right. He often insulted de Moraes in his platform, calling him a dictator and tyrant.
De Moraes’ defense argued that his actions against X had been legal, supported by most of the court’s bench, and had protected democracy in the time it affected. Friday’s order is based on Brazilian law that requires foreign companies to have representatives in the country to be notified when legal cases are brought against them.
Since the operators are aware of the publicly announced standoff and the obligation to comply with orders from de Moraes, plus the fact that it is not complicated, X can be offline from 12 o’clock after receiving the instructions, said Luca Belli, coordinator of the Center for Technology and Society at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a university in Rio de Janeiro.
Such closures are unprecedented in Brazil.
Brazil’s Lone judge shut down WhatsApp Meta, the country’s most widely used messaging app, several times in 2015 and 2016 because the company refused to comply with police requests for user data. In 2022, de Moraes threatened the Telegram messaging application with a national shutdown, because it had repeatedly ignored requests from Brazilian authorities to block profiles and provide information. He ordered Telegram to elect local representatives; the company eventually complied and stayed online.
X and its former incarnation, Twitter, have been banned in several countries – mostly authoritarian regimes such as Russia, China, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Venezuela and Turkmenistan. Other countries, such as Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt, have also suspended X in the past, mostly to quell dissent and unrest. Twitter was banned in Egypt after the Arab Spring uprisings, which some dubbed the “Twitter revolution,” but it has now been reinstated.
A search on Friday on X showed hundreds of Brazilian users asking about VPNs that could potentially allow them to continue using the platform by making it appear they are logging in from outside the country. It was not immediately clear how the Brazilian authorities monitored this practice and imposed the fine cited by de Moraes.
Mariana de Souza Alves Lima, known by the handle MariMoon, showed her 1.4 million followers on X that she was going to move to the rival social network BlueSky, sending a screenshot and saying: “This is where I’m going.”
X said it plans to publish what de Moraes called “illegal claims” and related court filings “in the interest of transparency.”
Also on Thursday afternoon, Starlink, Musk’s satellite internet service provider, said in X that de Moraes this week froze its finances, preventing it from carrying out any transactions in the country with more than 250,000 subscribers.
“This order is based on the unfounded determination that Starlink should be responsible for the fine imposed-unconstitutionally against X. It was issued in secret and without giving Starlink the legal process guaranteed by the Brazilian Constitution. solve the problem legally,” said Starlink in the statement.
Musk responded to those who shared the freeze report, adding insults to de Moraes. “This guy @Alexandre is the worst criminal impersonating a judge,” he wrote.
Musk later sent on X that SpaceX, which runs Starlink, will provide free internet service in Brazil “until the problem is resolved” because “we can’t accept payments, but we don’t want to cut anyone.”
In his decision, de Moraes said he ordered the freezing of Starlink’s assets, because X did not have enough money in his account to cover the increased fines and for the reason that the two companies belong to the same economic group.
