Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes issued an order banning Elon Musk’s social media platform X on 30 August 2024.
The South African billionaire got entangled in Brazilian politics in April when Judge de Moraes ordered Musk to block X accounts supporting former president Jair Bolsonaro for spreading fake news and hate speech about the 2022 election.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva came to power in 2022 after defeating his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro, who, along with his supporters, still insists that the election was rigged.
To add fire to the flame Musk publicly insults Judge de Morae on X calling him a “fake judge” and a doctor of Brazil”.
He also criticizes President Lula da Silva’s government saying among other things “The current Brazilian administration likes to wear the cloak of a free democracy while crushing the people under its boot”
Musk responded to Judge de Moraes’s order by labeling it as censorship. He also shut down X’s local offices, fearing that X representative Rachel Nova Conceicao might be arrested for non-compliance.
On August 27 court Judge de Moraes issued an order giving X a 24-hour ultimatum to appoint a local legal representative at the risk of being banned nationally.
X missed the deadline, prompting Judge de Moraes to order telecommunications providers to block the platform with a $9,000 daily fine for anyone using VPNs to bypass the ban.
The loss of Brazil’s 20+ million X users will add pressure on Musk, who is already struggling to increase advertising revenue on the social media platform he bought for $44 billion in 2022.
In anticipation of the ban in Brazil, X Global Government Affairs issued the following statement on August 30.
Soon, we expect Judge Alexandre de Moraes will order X to be shut down in Brazil – simply because we would not comply with his illegal orders to censor his political opponents.
These enemies include a duly elected Senator and a 16-year-old girl, among others. When we attempted to defend ourselves in court, Judge de Moraes threatened our Brazilian legal representative with imprisonment.
Even after she resigned, he froze all of her bank accounts. Our challenges against his manifestly 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. We are absolutely not insisting that other countries have the same free speech laws as the United States.
The fundamental issue at stake here is that Judge de Moraes demands we break Brazil’s own laws. We simply won’t do that. In the days to come, we will publish all of Judge de Moraes’ illegal demands and all related court filings in the interest of transparency.
Unlike other social media and technology platforms, we will not comply in secret with illegal orders. To our users in Brazil and around the world, X remains committed to protecting your freedom of speech
