Brazil’s highest court has ordered internet providers to block the social media site X (formerly Twitter), after owner Elon Musk defied a court order to hire a new attorney to represent X in the country, as required by local law.
The order, issued Friday by Brazilian Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes, is the latest escalation in a months-long dispute rooted in the ongoing investigation into the Jan. 8, 2023 insurrection against the country’s government.
Following his loss in the 2022 election, supporters of right wing former president Jair Bolsonaro laid siege to the capital, Brasilia, in an attempt to restore him to power. (The attack was inspired by the one Donald Trump incited two years earlier.) Bolsonaro, who was in the United States on that day, denies any involvement, though military leaders have since confirmed he tried to persuade them to back him in a military coup shortly after the election.
The investigation, still ongoing, eventually extended to include the social media activity of other suspected individuals. This is where Musk enters the picture.
In April, he defied court orders from de Moraes to block the X accounts of several people suspected of involvement with the 7/8 attack. And earlier this month, Musk closed X operations in Brazil and eliminated all staff there after de Moraes threatened to arrest his Brazilian attorney over his continuing defiance of the law.
But Brazilian law also requires that any company doing business in Brazil — and X continued to provide users there with access — must have legal representation in the country. So on Wednesday, de Moraes ordered Musk to hire a new attorney to represent X in Brazil within 24 hours, or else the site would be blocked. Musk refused, and here we are.
“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 wrote.
De Moraes has given internet service providers five days to block access to X. After that, any individual or company who accesses the platform via a virtual private network (VPN) will be subject to fines of up to $8,900 per day.
The judge also referred to Musk as an “outlaw” who intended to “allow the massive spread of disinformation, hate speech and attacks on the democratic rule of law, violating the free choice of the electorate, by keeping voters away from real and accurate information.”
“When we attempted to defend ourselves in court, Judge de Moraes threatened our Brazilian legal representative with imprisonment. Even after she resigned, he froze all of her bank accounts,” the company said in a statement. “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.”
Musk for his part insists that he is waging a fight over “free speech” and he’s claimed the court orders are effectively a form of censorship. And in a statement claimed de Moraes had issued “illegal orders to censor his political opponents.”
Notably however, Musk’s response to literal censorship demands made in other countries has been markedly different.
For just one example, in early 2023 India’s right wing government ordered that references to a BBC documentary critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi be blocked on Twitter. The company immediately complied. When asked about it, Musk said, “the rules in India for what can appear on social media are quite strict and we can’t go beyond the laws of the country.”
Musk has not yet explained the difference between Brazil and India.
Meanwhile, in May 2023 Twitter also complied with demands by Turkey’s right wing government to censor dissident accounts during the country’s presidential election. In a statement at the time, a company representatives said “We received what we believed to be a final threat to throttle the service — after several such warnings — and so in order to keep Twitter available over the election weekend, took action on four accounts and 409 Tweets identified by court order.”
Musk later angrily told one critic, “the choice is have Twitter throttled in its entirety or limit access to some tweets. Which one do you want?
Musk, who in recent years has become an open supporter of right wing extremist politics, has not commented on the difference between a Turkish court order and a Brazilian court order, or between blocking Turkish accounts, and blocking Brazilian accounts.
Musk has also never spoken out about the tragic case of Muhammad al-Ghamdi, a retired teacher in Saudi Arabia who was arrested and sentenced to death last year for comments he made on X/Twitter criticizing the government. Coincidentally, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al Saud, a member of the Saudi royal family, is an investor in X.
In a bid to collect the $3 million in fines he set for X, the judge also froze the finances of the Starlink satellite-internet service, which is a subsidiary of Musk’s SpaceX company. Musk called de Moraes “an outright criminal of the worst kind” for this.
Starlink, which has more than 250,000 customers, has vowed to fight the order, saying in a statement that the fine is “unconstitutional” and was “issued in secret and without affording Starlink any of the due process of law guaranteed by the Constitution of Brazil.”
Market research group Emarketer says that approximately 40 million Brazilians, or one-fifth of the population, access X at least once per month, according to CBS News.
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