(Bloomberg) — Brazil’s Supreme Court has ordered the immediate suspension of X in the country after billionaire owner Elon Musk ignored orders to appoint a legal representative for the social network in Latin America’s largest country.
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The ban on the platform formerly known as Twitter ends a months-long feud between Musk and Chief Justice Alexandre de Moraes, a leader in the fight against fake news and hate speech that he says is damaging to Brazil’s democracy.
X has contributed to “an environment of total impunity and lawlessness on Brazilian social networks, including during the 2024 local elections,” Moraes wrote in his ruling, saying the company has repeatedly and deliberately ignored court orders.
“Extremist groups and digital militias” have used the platform for “mass dissemination of Nazi, racist, fascist, hateful and anti-democratic speech,” he wrote, adding that anyone using a VPN to access the platform would be subject to daily fines of 50,000 reais ($8,900).
A representative for X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The social media platform was still available Friday night, as it takes some time for Moraes’ order to be implemented. Brazil’s telecommunications watchdog has 24 hours to implement the ban, while Apple and Google have five days to block X on iOS and Android and remove the X app from their online stores, the ruling said. Internet service providers also have five days to block the platform.
Ahead of the decision, Brazilian celebrities, internet personalities and politicians, including President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, prepared for a ban by tweeting to their audiences via social media on other networks.
Musk closed X’s Brazil office earlier this month to protest court orders to remove certain accounts that were allegedly spreading misinformation. In response, the court told the company on Wednesday night, in response to a post on X, that Moraes had given the company 24 hours to appoint a legal representative in the country or risk having its service suspended.
Brazil has historically been a major market for many of the largest social networking services, including X. X is estimated to have tens of millions of active users in the country, according to third-party estimates, and Brazil has long been one of X’s largest hubs outside the US and Japan.
Brazil isn’t the first country where X has been suspended. The service has long been banned in countries including China, Iran and North Korea. In 2022, it was restricted in Russia after President Vladimir Putin invaded neighboring Ukraine. Former Twitter executives halted ads in the country and began labeling links from all state-backed Russian media outlets, eventually setting up a separate version of the service to help people access it despite government restrictions.
Misinformation or freedom of speech
Democracies around the world are grappling with the effects of social media on their elections and politics. But Brazil has taken some of the most aggressive measures to hold companies accountable for content after the 2022 presidential election.
During the campaign, former President Jair Bolsonaro took to the airwaves and online platforms to sow distrust about his country’s electronic voting system. Unsubstantiated claims of hacking and vote theft fueled the anger of Bolsonaro supporters who rioted in Brasilia under the false belief that Lula had lost the election.
In April, Moraes implicated Musk in a wide-ranging investigation into so-called digital militias, organized groups accused of using social media to spread false information and vitriol, and fined the company for ignoring court orders to remove content.
The move only appeared to escalate the standoff between Brazil’s Supreme Court and the world’s richest person. While X initially complied with orders to remove accounts suspected of spreading falsehoods, Musk later appeared to defy Moraes, announcing that he would lift the restrictions even if it hurt his company’s profits.
In August, X issued a statement saying it was closing its operations in Brazil “effective immediately” after Moraes threatened his legal representative with arrest for disobeying court orders. Meanwhile, Musk continued to rail against the judge on his platform, claiming that his efforts to control content amounted to force majeure and censorship.
He responded to the order to appoint a representative in Brazil by posting a photo of a bald man in black robes behind bars — an apparent AI-generated image of Moraes. “One day, Alexandre, this photo of you in prison will be real. Mark my words,” Musk wrote.
Musk, a self-proclaimed advocate for free speech, has stripped the company of much of its content moderation infrastructure and staff since purchasing it in 2022. The company primarily relies on X users to monitor content for misinformation through Community Notes, a feature that adds labels to posts that users deem misleading.
Musk often uses his platform to rebuke critics and reprimand world leaders, including Brazilian First Lady Rosangela da Silva, whose X-page was reportedly hacked last year. And the clash with authorities has earned Musk praise within Brazil’s conservative circles, who have long accused the judiciary of attacking their cause.
If the ban stands, X risks losing one of its biggest markets outside the US, depriving thousands of candidates of their popular campaign tools ahead of local elections taking place in October in more than 5,000 Brazilian municipalities.
A December survey found that 29% of smartphone users in Brazil have installed X. According to Sensor Tower, a data firm, the platform had about 20 million active users in the country as of the first quarter of 2024, down about 15% from the previous year.
Other social media platforms have previously run afoul of internet regulations. Last year, a judge ordered Telegram to be temporarily shut down after the messaging service failed to share user data on neo-Nazi content that authorities said was linked to attacks on Brazilian schools.
WhatsApp, a messaging service owned by Meta Platforms Inc., was also briefly banned in 2016 after the company failed to comply with court orders to share user data.
–With assistance from Beatriz Amat and Kurt Wagner.
(Updates with details of the Supreme Court ruling starting in the third paragraph.)
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