A Supreme Court judge on Friday ordered the suspension of Elon Musk’s X social media network in Brazil after the billionaire failed to comply with an order to name a new legal representative for the company.
Musk has for months been embroiled in a dispute with Judge Alexandre de Moraes, who is leading the fight against misinformation in South America’s largest country.
Moraes ordered “the immediate, complete and comprehensive suspension of the operations of ‘X Brasil Internet Ltda’ throughout the national territory.”
He ordered the National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel) to take all necessary measures to implement the order within 24 hours.
They also called on Google, Apple and internet providers to “erect technical barriers capable of preventing the use of the X application” and to block access to the website.
The social media platform, formally known as Twitter, has more than 22 million users in Brazil.
Musk shut down X’s commercial operations in Brazil earlier this month, alleging that Moraes had threatened the company’s previous legal representative with arrest for complying with “censorship orders.”
On Wednesday, Moraes told Musk to “appoint a new legal representative of the company in Brazil within 24 hours” or face suspension.
The South African-born Tesla owner tweeted calling Moraes “an evil dictator acting as a judge” and accused him of “attempting to destroy democracy in Brazil.”
“We expect that soon Judge Alexandre de Moraes will order the shutdown of X in Brazil — simply because we will not comply with his illegal order to censor his political opponents,” X said in a statement shortly after the 24-hour deadline passed.
– ‘Who does Musk think he is?’-
The standoff with Musk began after Moraes ordered the suspension of several X accounts belonging to supporters of former Brazilian right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro, who had sought to discredit the voting system in the 2022 election, which he lost.
Brazilian authorities are investigating whether Bolsonaro plotted a coup to prevent current President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office in January 2023.
Online users blocked by Moraes include individuals such as Daniel Silveira, a former far-right congressman who was sentenced in 2022 to nine years in prison for leading a movement to overthrow the Supreme Court.
In April, Moraes ordered an investigation into Musk, accusing him of reactivating some accounts previously banned on the network known as Twitter.
Musk and other critics have accused Moraes of suppressing free expression.
“Any citizen from anywhere in the world who invests in Brazil is subject to the Brazilian constitution and laws,” Lula told a local radio station on Friday.
“Who does (Musk) think he is?”
– Starlink’s financial losses halted –
On Thursday, Musk’s satellite internet operator Starlink said it had received an order from Moraes that “freezes Starlink’s finances and prohibits Starlink from conducting financial transactions in the country”.
Starlink, which operates in Brazil, particularly in the Amazon, alleged that the order is “based on an unfounded determination that Starlink should be responsible for the unconstitutionally imposed fines against X.”
The company said on X that it “intends to settle the matter legally.”
Musk is also the subject of a separate judicial investigation into an alleged scheme in which public money was used to run a misinformation campaign in favour of Bolsonaro and people close to him.
The spread and amplification of misinformation and conspiracy theories on social media has sparked debate about the need to regulate content and strike a balance between exposing falsehoods and censorship or curbing freedom of expression.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
