A standoff between Brazilian Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes and Elon Musk intensified on 29 August 2024, as the billionaire’s Starlink company said its assets had been frozen in the country amid a feud over the fate of his social media platform X. (Etienne Laurent and Evaristo Sa/AFP)
- A Brazilian Supreme Court judge has ordered Elon Musk’s
social media platform, X (formerly Twitter), to be suspended in Brazil. - Musk criticised
the judge responsible for the ruling, accusing him of attacking democracy and
free speech in Brazil. - The judge demanded technological measures to enforce the
suspension and threatened fines for circumvention.
A Brazilian Supreme Court judge on Friday ordered the
suspension of Elon Musk’s X social media network in the country, after a
months-long standoff over disinformation in South America’s largest nation.
The judge, Alexandre de Moraes, handed down the ruling after
Musk failed to comply with an order to name a new legal representative for the
company.
Musk, who also owns Tesla and SpaceX, reacted with fury,
branding Moraes an “evil dictator cosplaying as a judge” and accusing
him of “trying to destroy democracy in Brazil.”
“Free speech is the bedrock of democracy and an
unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is destroying it for political purposes,”
the billionaire, who has become increasingly aligned with right-wing politics,
wrote on X.
The two have been locked in an ongoing, high-profile feud
for months as Moraes leads a battle against disinformation in Brazil.
Musk has previously declared himself a “free speech
absolutist,” but since he took over the platform formerly known as Twitter
in 2022 he has been accused of turning it into a megaphone for right-wing
conspiracy theories.
He is a vocal supporter of former US president Donald
Trump’s bid to regain the White House.
Moraes ordered the “immediate, complete and
comprehensive suspension of the operation of” X in the country, telling
the national communications agency to take “all necessary measures”
to implement the order within 24 hours.
He threatened a fine of 50 000 reais ($8 900) to anyone who
used “technological subterfuges” to get around the block, such as a
VPN.
He also demanded Google, Apple and internet providers to
“introduce technological obstacles capable of preventing the use of the X
application” and access to the website – though he later walked back that
order.
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The social media platform has more than 22 million users in
Brazil.
Musk shut X’s business operations in Brazil earlier this
month, claiming Moraes had threatened the company’s previous legal
representative with arrest to force compliance with “censorship
orders.”
On Wednesday, Moraes told Musk he had 24 hours to find a new
representative or he would face suspension.
Shortly after the deadline passed, X said in a statement
that it expected Moraes to shut it down “simply because we would not
comply with his illegal orders to censor his political opponents.”
‘Who does Musk think he is?’
The standoff with Musk began when Moraes ordered the
suspension of several X accounts belonging to supporters of Brazil’s former
far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, who tried to discredit the voting system in
the 2022 election, which he lost.
Brazilian authorities are investigating whether Bolsonaro
plotted a coup attempt to prevent current President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
from assuming office in January 2023.
Online users blocked by Moraes include figures like
far-right ex-congressman Daniel Silveira, who was sentenced to nine years in
prison in 2022 on charges of leading a movement to overthrow the Supreme Court.
In April, Moraes ordered an investigation of Musk, accusing
him of reactivating some of the banned accounts.
On Thursday, Musk’s satellite internet operator Starlink
said it had received an order from Moraes that froze its accounts and prevented
it from conducting financial transactions in Brazil.
Starlink alleged that the order “is based on an
unfounded determination that Starlink should be responsible for the fines
levied – unconstitutionally – against X.”
READ | Telegram chief to appear in court after arrest in France
The company said on X that it intended “to address the
matter legally.”
Musk is also the subject of a separate judicial
investigation into an alleged scheme where public money was used to orchestrate
disinformation campaigns in favour of Bolsonaro and those close to him.
“Any citizen from anywhere in the world who has
investments in Brazil is subject to the Brazilian Constitution and laws,”
Lula told a local radio station on Friday.
“Who does (Musk) think he is?”
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