SAO PAULO (AP) — A Brazilian Supreme Court judge on Friday ordered the suspension of Elon Musk’s social media giant X in Brazil, after the tech billionaire refused to appoint a legal representative in the country, according to a copy of the decision seen by The Associated Press
The move escalates months of feud between the two men on freedom of expression, far-right statements and disinformation.
Judge Alexandre de Moraes warned Musk on Wednesday night that X could be blocked in Brazil if he did not comply with his order to appoint a representative, setting a 24-hour deadline. The company has been without a representative in the country since earlier this month.
In his decision, Moraes gave internet service providers and app stores five days to block access to X, saying the platform will remain blocked until it complies with his orders. He also said that people or companies that use virtual private networks, or VPNs, to access X will be subject to daily fines of 50,000 reais ($8,900).
“Elon Musk showed his total contempt for Brazilian sovereignty and in particular for its judiciary, positioning himself as a true supranational entity immune to the laws of any country,” de Moraes wrote.
Brazil is an important market for X, which is struggling with the loss of advertisers since Musk bought the former Twitter in 2022. According to market research firm Emarketer, some 40 million Brazilians, about a fifth of the population, visit X at least once a month.
X had posted on its official Global Government Affairs page late Thursday night that it expected X to be shut down by De Moraes, “simply for not complying with his illegal orders to censor his political opponents.”
“When we tried to defend ourselves in court, Judge de Moraes threatened our Brazilian attorney with jail time. Even after she had resigned, he froze all of her bank accounts,” the firm wrote. “Our objections to his clearly illegal actions were dismissed or ignored. Judge de Moraes’ colleagues at the Supreme Court are unwilling or unable to resist him.”
X is in conflict with De Moraes because the party does not want to comply with the order to block users.
The platform has reportedly previously shut down at the behest of Brazilian authorities, including lawmakers with ties to former President Jair Bolsonaro’s right-wing party and activists accused of undermining Brazilian democracy.
Musk, a self-described “free speech absolutist,” has repeatedly claimed that the judge’s actions amount to censorship, and his argument has been echoed by Brazil’s political right. He has frequently insulted Moraes on his platform, characterizing him as a dictator and tyrant.
De Moraes’s defenders have said his actions against X were lawful, supported by most of the full court, and served to protect democracy at a time when it is in danger. His order Friday is based on Brazilian law that requires foreign companies to have a presence in the country so they can be notified when lawsuits are pending against them.
Given that the operators are aware of the widely publicized standoff and their obligation to comply with an order from De Moraes, and the fact that doing so is not complicated, X could be offline within 12 hours of receiving their instructions, said Luca Belli, coordinator of the Technology and Society Center at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a university in Rio de Janeiro.
The lockdown is not new in Brazil.
Lone Brazilian judges shut down Meta’s WhatsApp, the country’s most widely used messaging app, multiple times in 2015 and 2016 after the company refused to comply with police requests for user data. In 2022, de Moraes threatened messaging app Telegram with a nationwide shutdown after it repeatedly ignored requests from Brazilian authorities to block profiles and provide information. He ordered Telegram to appoint a local representative; the company eventually complied and remained online.
X and its former incarnation, Twitter, are banned in several countries — mostly authoritarian regimes such as Russia, China, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Venezuela, and Turkmenistan. Other countries, such as PakistanTurkey and Egypt have also suspended X temporarily in the past, mostly to quell dissent and unrest. Twitter was banned in Egypt after the Arab Spring uprisings, which some called the “Twitter Revolution,” but has since been reinstated.
A search on X on Friday showed hundreds of Brazilian users inquiring about VPNs that might allow them to continue using the platform by pretending to log in from outside the country. It was not immediately clear how Brazilian authorities would police and impose fines that de Moraes mentioned.
Mariana de Souza Alves Lima, better known by her name MariMoon, let her 1.4 million followers on X know that she was moving to rival social network BlueSky. She posted a screenshot and said: “That’s where I’m going.”
X said it plans to publish De Moraes’ so-called “illegal demands” and related judicial documents “in the interests of transparency.”
Also Thursday night, Starlink, Musk’s satellite internet provider, reported on X that De Moraes froze its finances this week, preventing the company from conducting transactions in the country where it has more than 250,000 customers.
“This order is based on an unfounded finding that Starlink should be responsible for the fines imposed – unconstitutionally – on X. It was issued in secret and without providing Starlink with any of the legal procedures guaranteed by the Brazilian Constitution. We intend to pursue the matter legally,” Starlink said in its statement.
Musk responded to people who shared the posts about the freeze, adding insult to injury to De Moraes. “This guy @Alexandre is a criminal of the worst kind, posing as a judge,” he wrote.
Musk later posted on X that SpaceX, which operates Starlink, will provide free internet service in Brazil “until the matter is resolved,” as “we cannot receive payment, but we don’t want to leave anyone out.”
In his decision, De Moraes indicated that he had ordered the freezing of Starlink’s assets because X did not have enough money in his accounts to pay the mounting fines. He reasoned that the two companies are part of the same economic group.
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