A Supreme Court judge on Friday ordered the suspension of Elon Musk’s X social media network after a months-long standoff over misinformation in Brazil, South America’s largest country.
Judge Alexander de Moraes issued 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, labelling Moraes “an evil dictator acting as a judge” and accusing him of “trying to destroy democracy in Brazil”.
“Free expression is the cornerstone of democracy and an unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is destroying it for political purposes,” the billionaire wrote on X.
Freedom of expression is the cornerstone of democracy and an unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is destroying it for political purposes https://t.co/eqbowALCeu
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 30, 2024
The two have been locked in a high-profile feud for several months, as Moraes leads the fight against misinformation in Brazil.
Musk previously declared himself a “free speech absolutist,” but since he took over the platform known as Twitter in 2022, he has been accused of turning it into a megaphone for right-wing conspiracy theories.
Moraes ordered the “immediate, complete and comprehensive suspension of X’s operations” in the country, and asked the National Communications Agency 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.
They threatened people with a fine of 50,000 reais ($8,900) if they used “technical circumvention” such as VPNs.
This social media platform 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 he had 24 hours to find a new representative or face suspension.
Shortly after the deadline passed, Axe said in a statement that it expected Moraes to shut it down “simply because we will not comply with his illegal order to censor his political opponents.”
– ‘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 of the banned accounts.
On Thursday, Musk’s satellite internet operator Starlink said it had received an order from Moraes freezing his accounts and barring him from making financial transactions in Brazil.
Starlink alleged that the order is “based on an unfounded determination that Starlink should be responsible for the fines unconstitutionally imposed 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.
“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?”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
