Less than two years after acquiring Twitter, now X, Elon Musk has managed to lose the company’s access to its third-largest market and, according to reports, over 40 million users. And despite this his bravado on the netit looks like he’s painted himself into a corner.
Brazil’s decision to ban X is the culmination of an ongoing conflict between Musk and the country’s Supreme Electoral Court (TSE), a special court headed by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes that has issued orders to remove content it deems a threat to election integrity. Musk and X have refused to comply, allowing accounts accused of spreading hate speech and disinformation to remain on the platform, ultimately leading to the bans.
Starlink has also found itself in the crosshairs: A court froze the assets of another of Musk’s companies, saying it was part of the same “economic group” as X because of its ownership, with the potential to be used to pay off fines owed by X. When the blockade went into effect Monday, Starlink allowed its customers—more than 250,000 people, according to the company—to bypass X’s ban by using a satellite internet connection. After initial resistance, Starlink backed down and said it would comply. Experts who spoke to WIRED say it increasingly appears that Musk overreacted.
“I think he knows that Brazilians won’t take to the streets because X is suspended,” says Nina Santos, a researcher at Brazil’s National Institute of Science and Technology for Digital Democracy. “Brazilian institutions won’t back down just because Musk is cursing online.”
In response to a request for comment, X’s spokesperson referred WIRED to fasting from the platform’s Global Affairs team. “To our users in Brazil and around the world, X remains committed to protecting free speech,” reads part of the post.
Meanwhile, Musk continues to antagonize the court. Last week, he posted an apparently AI-generated image of Moraes behind bars (later removed) with accompanying text stating, “One day, Alexandre, this image of you in prison will become real,” and another comparing it to Harry Potter villain Voldemort.
“Since April, he has been playing with Moraes’ image, the legitimacy of the Supreme Court, and has escalated in a problematic way,” says Bruna Santos, a researcher and activist with the civil society coalition Coalizão Direitos na Rede in Brazil. “He was fully aware and knew what the consequences would be.”
WIRED reported how employees scrambled to avoid a legal crisis when Musk took over Twitter in 2022, just days before Brazil’s presidential election. The company received a consent decree from the judiciary warning it that if it didn’t keep its promise to maintain security around the election, it risked being banned. At the time, the country’s then-president, Jair Bolsonaro, and his supporters allegedly spread disinformation about the security of the country’s elections in an effort to undermine the results. Musk promised to roll back the company’s existing content moderation policies and promised a kind of “free speech absolutism” that effectively allowed hate speech, misinformation, and disinformation to flow freely on the platform.