X will soon have to give a face to its presence in Brazil before the country’s Supreme Court bans the platform from the second-largest country in the Americas.
The Supreme Court an order placed at 8:31 p.m. local time Wednesday evening and on X instructing the service to appoint a legal representative in Brazil within 24 hours, “under penalty of suspension of activities in Brazil.”
The order signed by Alexandre de Moraes, one of the court’s 11 judges, comes after X announced that it Closure of activities in Brazil instead of complying with an order from De Moraes to block accounts that allegedly posted disinformation aimed at undermining Brazilian democracy.
Since April, the judge has had a inquiry in the role the former Twitter is said to have played a role in helping “digital militias” plan the January 2023 uprising in Brasilia in support of former President Jair Bolsonaro.
The rioters who stormed the capital’s presidential, legislative and judicial buildings were trying to overturn Bolsonaro’s defeat in the October 2022 election by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Many hoped the military would join them and stage a coup, as Brazil’s armed forces did in 1964 before taking office. 21 years of military dictatorship with much extrajudicial detention, torture and executions.
The January 2023 uprising is widespread compared to the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol–except that in Brazil, the courts and other government agencies have not overstepped the mark to shield Bolsonaro from accountability. In June 2023, the Supreme Court ruled banned the former president from running for office until 2030.
(In April, President Lula, as he is popularly known, became one of the few heads of state to open an office the Twitter alternative Blueskywhere he posts under the same name “lulao-official” handle he uses on X.)
This is not the first time that Brazilian authorities have threatened to ban a social platform due to non-compliance. In March 2022, Moraes said ordered Telegram to close in the country for failing to comply with legal obligations to combat disinformation; Telegram founder Pavel Durov, now facing a series of criminal charges in Franceblamed the failure of employees to read emails from Brazilian officials, and the closure ended after two days.
In January 2023, a court has imposed a new short block on Telegram because he did not want to release information about alleged neo-Nazi activities on the platform.
However, Musk has taken this treatment more personally, criticizing De Moraes in increasingly hostile terms, Bolsonaro supporters cheeredMeanwhile, Musk has walked away from X’s anti-disinformation effortsinvited such disinformation magnets as disgraced conspiracy liar Alex Jones back to X, and has shared fake images himself.
Musk took the news as he took most criticism: by citing expressions of support from his chorus of superfans with opinions like “This ‘judge’ has repeatedly broken the laws he swore to uphold,” and sharing a modified image of de Moraes brandishing lightsabers “It’s like Voldemort and a Sith Lord had a baby and he became a judge in Brazil.”
And Musk posted another generated image of Moraes behind barstagged with the handle of which the judge has not posted anything since January 11, under the text “One day, @Alexandre, this photo of you in prison will be real. Remember my words.”
