Brazil blocks X after Musk ignores court orders
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Brazil blocked the social network X on Aug 30 after its owner Elon Musk refused to comply with a judge’s orders to suspend certain accounts.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Follow topic:
BRASILIA - Brazil blocked the social network X on Aug 30 after its owner, Mr Elon Musk, refused to comply with a judge’s orders to suspend certain accounts, the biggest test yet of the billionaire’s efforts to transform the site into a digital town square where just about anything goes.
Mr Alexandre de Moraes, a Brazilian Supreme Court justice, ordered internet providers to block access to X across the nation of 200 million because the company lacked a necessary legal representative in Brazil.
Mr Musk closed X’s office in Brazil last week after Mr Moraes threatened arrests for ignoring his orders to remove X accounts that he said broke Brazilian laws.
X on Aug 29 said that it viewed Mr Moraes’ orders as illegal and that it planned to break their legal seal and publish them. “Unlike other social media and technology platforms, we will not comply in secret with illegal orders,” the company said in a statement.
In an unusual move, Mr Moraes also froze the finances of another Musk business in Brazil, SpaceX’s Starlink satellite-internet service, to try to collect fines he has levied against X. Starlink – which has recently exploded in popularity in Brazil, with more than 250,000 customers – said that it planned to fight the order and would make its service free in Brazil if necessary.
Mr Musk and Mr Moraes have been sparring for months. Mr Musk says Mr Moraes is illegally censoring conservative voices. Mr Moraes says Mr Musk is illegally obstructing his work to rid the Brazilian internet of hate speech and attacks on democracy.
After the Brazilian Supreme Court’s X account posted on Aug 28 that Mr Musk had 24 hours to name a new representative in the country, Mr Musk responded with an image of toilet paper with Mr Moraes’ name on it.
The fight is now at the centre of Mr Musk’s bid to turn X into a safe haven for people to say nearly anything they want, even if it hurts the business in the process.
In dozens of posts since April, Mr Musk has built up Mr Moraes as one of the world’s biggest enemies of free speech, and it appears Mr Musk is now betting the judge will cave to the public backlash he believes the block will cause.
But the longer the blackout on X lasts, the more it will test Mr Musk’s commitment to his ideology at the expense of revenue, market share and influence. NYTIMES
