Brazil’s highest court has ordered the suspension of access to website X in the country of more than 200 million people, after a prominent judge continued his dispute with the site’s owner Elon Musk.
Musk has been at odds with Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes for months over X’s moderation policies. Earlier this year Moraes has launched an investigation against X after Musk rejected a court order to block accounts supporting former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro that allegedly spread phony news and hate speech. News of X being blocked in Brazil was first reported by Associated Press Press Agency and others.
The AP also reported that internet service providers and app stores in Brazil have five days to comply with the ruling. “Given the number of internet service providers in Brazil, it could take some time for them to fully implement the filtering measure, depending on how they do it,” said Isik Mater, research director at Netblocks, a civil society group that tracks internet censorship.
“Freedom of speech is the foundation of democracy,” Musk said in a post on X after the ban was announced. He also claimed that Moraes was a “pseudo-judge” who was “destroying it for political purposes.”
Internet companies must have a legal representative in Brazil who can act as an intermediary between the government and the corporation. X currently does not have one because the site close your offices in Brazil earlier this year, after Moraes threatened to arrest a legal representative as part of the investigation. A Supreme Court-imposed deadline for X to install a up-to-date representative passed on Thursday evening.
“We soon expect Judge Alexandre de Moraes to issue an order to close X in Brazil — simply because we will not carry out his illegal orders to censor his political opponents,” reads the X Global Report he claimed in the post on Thursday evening. “These enemies include, among others, a duly elected senator and a 16-year-old girl.”
Musk quoted this post and accused Moraes, is an “evil dictator disguised as a judge.”
In his statement, X said the court’s decisions violate Brazilian law, saying they are “illegal” and announcing that he will publish all related court documents.
Moraes’ office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
As of Friday morning, the X appeared to still be available in Brazil, with users posting about Saddleo Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Now, however, anyone caught using a VPN to access X will be subject to a fine of 50,000 reais, which is about $8,900, according to AP.
Now, however, the suspension is imminent. Moraes already froze bank accounts belonging to Starlink, the satellite internet company Musk is a part of, this week. Starlink Statement published on X said the company has a quarter of a million customers in Brazil and that the action was a “baseless” attempt to hold Starlink liable for fines levied against X for failing to turn over documents. The company said it would seek legal remedies.
If a huge country like Brazil were to block X, it would be a significant event regardless of the circumstances, but it’s worth noting that it comes amid a global push to curtail the influence of huge platforms and the billionaires who own them.
This week, Telegram’s billionaire CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in France and charged with “complicity” in a series of stern crimes committed on the app, which has built a reputation for being lightly moderated over the years. The arrest sent shockwaves through the global tech industry, and Musk comments“dangerous times.”
Updated August 30, 2024, 5:05 p.m. ET: This story has been updated to reflect that a Brazilian court ordered X suspended.