A Brazilian Supreme Court justice is suspending social media platform X from operating in the country for failing to name a legal representative, escalating a months-long feud between the two parties over the platform’s free speech policy.
Judge Alexandre de Moraes ordered the suspension Friday after X did not name a legal representative following a 24-hour deadline he imposed Wednesday night, the Associated Press reported. X will be prevented from operating in Brazil until it cooperates with de Moraes’s order, and those who attempt to use X with a virtual private network (VPN) will be fined the Brazilian equivalent of $8,900. Internet service providers and app stores have five days to comply with de Moraes’s decision.
“Elon Musk showed his total disrespect for Brazilian sovereignty and, in particular, for the judiciary, setting himself up as a true supranational entity and immune to the laws of each country,” de Moraes said.
VPNs are a commonly used tool for citizens of authoritarian regimes to get around internet firewalls, and it is unclear how Brazil will prevent its people from equipping them to access X.
In preparation for de Moraes’s ruling, X’s global government affairs page issued a statement Thursday accusing de Moraes of threatening the company’s legal representative and violating Brazilian law with his demands to censor his political opponents.
“When we attempted to defend ourselves in court, Judge de Moraes threatened our Brazilian legal representative with imprisonment,” the statement reads.
“Even after she resigned, he froze all of her bank accounts. Our challenges against his manifestly illegal actions were either dismissed or ignored. Judge de Moraes’ colleagues on the Supreme Court are either unwilling or unable to stand up to him.”
Elon Musk, the owner of X and a proponent of free speech, has called de Moraes an “evil dictator” and compared him to Voldemort, a well-known villain of the Harry Potter series, for his orders to censor certain political viewpoints in Brazil.
An estimated 40 million Brazilians use the platform, and it was once a major factor in anti-corruption protests across the country. Brazil joins authoritarian regimes such as Russia, China, and Iran in its decision to ban X from operating because of the viewpoints espoused on the platform.
Earlier this week, de Moraes froze the bank accounts of Musk’s broadband provider Starlink because of X’s failure to pay fines for disobeying his orders. Despite the judge’s order, Musk said Space X, Starlink’s parent company, will continue providing broadband services for free to its roughly 250,000 Brazilian customers.
A polarizing figure, de Moraes facilitated the transfer of power to Brazilian president Lula da Silva in 2022 after outgoing right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro and his supporters disputed the election results and a group of his supporters attacked Brazilian government buildings.
All the while, de Moraes has played a central role in expanding the power of Brazil’s supreme court and he has imposed censorship on social media activity with little transparency or accountability.
House Republicans on the Judiciary Committee have investigated Brazilian censorship as an extension of their probe into how federal agencies and the Biden administration pressured social media platforms to restrict certain forms of speech.
Censorship orders from the Brazilian Supreme Court and the Superior Electoral Court, a high court de Moraes previously presided over, leveled on X have overwhelmingly targeted conservatives and critics of Lula’s progressive government, the Judiciary Committee determined based on legal documents the panel obtained.
Musk’s commitment to free speech has also put X in trouble with the European Commission’s tech regular, who recently threatened him for interviewing former U.S. president Donald Trump on the site. Like Brazil, the European Union is pursuing legal proceedings against X for refusing to suppress “disinformation” on the platform.