Brazilian Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes Friday ordered Elon Musk’s X suspended in Brazil after the billionaire owner of the social media platform formerly known as Twitter refused to name a legal representative in the country.
Musk in a post on X called him “an evil dictator.”
The two have been tangling for months, according to multiple news reports. De Moraes warned the Tesla founder on Wednesday that X might be blocked after the platform’s rep in the country resigned earlier this month.
Brazilian law requires internet companies to have representation in the country so they can be alerted to any legal decisions or regulations and take necessary action, the AP said. The justice specified the takedown of illicit content posted by users, and an anticipated churn of misinformation during October municipal elections. He gave X 24 hours to comply but it did not.
“Elon Musk showed his total disrespect for Brazilian sovereignty and, in particular, for the judiciary, setting himself up as a true supranational entity and immune to the laws of each country,” de Moraes wrote in his decision, according to a copy of his decision.
He said X will stay suspended until it complies and gave ISPs and app stores five days to block access to the platform. He also ordered them to remove virtual private networks, or VPNs — which can make it appear a platform is being accessed from another country – and set fine the equivalent of $8,900 for individuals or companies that use VPNs to access X.
X has previously blocked accounts of lawmakers affiliated with Brazil’s former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro and activists trying to undermine democracy
Its Global Government Affairs late yesterday posted in English and Portuguese that it expected de Moraes to shutter the service “simply because we would not comply with his illegal orders to censor his political opponents.”
“When we attempted to defend ourselves in court, Judge de Moraes threatened our Brazilian legal representative with imprisonment,” X said. “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.”
“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.”
De Moraes’ decision, according to the news reports, said X “clearly intends to continue to encourage posts with extremism, hate speech and anti-democratic discourse, and to try to withdraw them from jurisdictional control.”
