São Paulo, Brazil – Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes has ordered on Friday the blocking of X (formerly Twitter) across the entire country after billionaire Elon Musk, the platform’s owner, refused to comply with a court order to appoint a new legal representative for X in Brazil.
The dispute began on August 17, when Musk announced the closure of X’s office in the country after refusing to comply with multiple decisions from Justice Moraes to suspend posts and profiles sharing fake news and hate speech.
The following day, Moraes notified X’s attorney and requested the appointment of a new legal representative. Since then, there has been no response from Musk nor any X director.
As a result, the judge decided to summon Musk through X on Wednesday, demanding that he appoint a legal representative in Brazil within 24 hours, under the penalty of suspending the social media. Musk refused to comply with the order and even mocked Moraes on his X profile, saying that the judge should be imprisoned.
The deadline given by Moraes expired on Thursday night, and on Friday afternoon, the order to block access to X throughout Brazil was issued. The first step in this process was to notify the National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel), the federal agency responsible for telephone and internet services in Brazil.
Anatel then notified all the country’s telecom operators to proceed with the block. The website went permanently offline around midnight this Saturday (Brasília time).
“Repeated, conscious, and voluntary noncompliance with court orders and failure to pay daily fines (which exceed USD $3.6 million), in addition to attempts to evade Brazilian law and judiciary, creating an environment of total impunity and ‘lawlessness’ on Brazilian social media, including during the 2024 city elections,” said Moraes in his decision.
Moraes’ decision also includes a fine of R$ 50,000 (USD $10,000) for any citizen or company accessing X via VPN. This part of the decision has been criticized by experts, who argue that the judge may have “gone too far” and that banning VPNs could be considered a form of censorship, as there are people and companies that use such tools to work and access several content abroad.
Musk spoke out on X, criticizing Moraes’ decision, saying that “free speech is the bedrock of democracy, and an unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is destroying it for political purposes.”
Also this Friday, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva criticized the billionaire’s refusal to comply with court orders and said that having a lot of money does not place him above the law – otherwise, Brazil’s sovereignty would be compromised.
“Every citizen, from any part of the world, who has investments in Brazil, is subject to the Brazilian Constitution and Brazilian laws. If the Supreme Court has made a decision for a citizen to comply with certain things, either they comply, or they will have to take another course of action,” said Lula.
