Personally I find X a huge pain in the ass. Not a big fan...lots of ads, difficult to filter out the garbage. But Brazil's President doesn't care for the platform because opposition leaders and students have used the platform to organize protests.
If you control social media platforms you help control dissent.
Elon Musk's X won't be up in Brazil anytime soon
The country's Supreme Court upheld its ban of the social media platform on Monday
By Morgan Haefner, Quartz Media
PublishedYesterday
The Supreme Court in Brazil stood by its decision to ban the use of X TSLA
in the country, where the social media platform has 21 million users.
Five members of the court made the decision on Monday, according to The Guardian. Justices accused X owner Elon Musk of consistently ignoring court orders and acting as if the company was above the law. (Meanwhile, Musk has called the court’s actions illegal).
Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes and Musk have been locked in a feud since April over a dispute related to Musk’s X, formerly known as Twitter. Moraes said he would investigate the billionaire for obstruction of justice after Musk pledged to defy a court order blocking some accounts on X. Musk’s company has claimed that Moraes threatened to arrest one of its legal representatives in Brazil if it didn’t comply.
As part of the feud, Moraes ordered that the assets of a “de facto economic group” under Musk’s control be frozen to guarantee X pays fines issued by Brazil’s courts, according to G1. Starlink, which is a subsidiary of Musk’s aerospace firm SpaceX and sells satellite internet services in Brazil, has confirmed that its assets have been frozen — a move that Musk has threatened with legal action.
On Monday when the ban was upheld, Musk shared a post about VPN use, writing: “Super easy to use a VPN if a website is restricted in your location.” However, under the ban that was upheld, using a VPN carries with it a daily fine of 50,000 reais ($8,900).
Elon Musk’s Starlink said it will take legal action after Brazil froze its financial assets
Elon Musk slammed a Brazilian judge as ‘an outright criminal’ after Starlink’s financial assets were blocked
Brazil Says Its Resistance to Elon Musk Is Global Example
Sharp words from the country’s president come after its Supreme Court rules to uphold ban on X, Musk’s social-media platform
By Samantha Pearson, WSJ
Updated Sept. 2, 2024 5:42 pm ET
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said his country should serve as an example for the rest of the world on how to deal with Elon Musk after the Supreme Court voted to uphold a ban on the billionaire’s social-media platform X.
“The world is not obliged to put up with Musk’s far-right ideology just because he is rich,” Brazil’s leftist leader told local media late Monday.
Brazil, one of the world’s largest democracies, shut down X over the weekend after Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes outlawed the social-media platform for failing to suspend accounts that he asserted contained hate speech and misinformation, as well as complying with other legal requirements.
A five-member panel of justices voted unanimously in favor of the ban Monday after de Moraes called on the court to review his decision. He and the court have been facing accusations of overstepping their mandate, both here in Brazil and far beyond. Musk has referred to de Moraes as a “dictator” on X.
“The whole world is watching this…this is clearly an effort to take the spotlight off de Moraes,” said Márcio Chaves, a São Paulo-based lawyer and professor in digital law. A legitimate and necessary debate on the regulation of social media in Brazil risks descending into a “personal duel” with Musk, he said.
Even before taking on the tech billionaire, de Moraes had earned a reputation as a lightning rod in Brazil’s battles over free speech, slapping fines and bans on social-media companies over recent years. Brazil’s right also reviles de Moraes, who has recently led criminal investigations into former President Jair Bolsonaro.
But the ban on X, which took effect early Saturday, is one of his most audacious moves yet, jurists say, drawing criticisms from free speech advocates and also some investors concerned about judicial overreach and the impact it might have on business.
U.S. hedge-fund billionaire Bill Ackman joined critics of the X ban over the weekend, warning that the platform’s shutdown could “put Brazil on a rapid path to becoming an uninvestable market.”
Causing most concern among investors was de Moraes’s decision to freeze the bank accounts of Starlink, Musk’s satellite-internet operation, to ensure that his social network would pay its fines.
Arthur Lira, the powerful leader of Brazil’s lower house of Congress, said the court should never have taken action against Starlink simply because the companies shared the same owner, saying the move threatened to create legal uncertainty in the country.
“The legal battle surrounding X should have never been transferred to Starlink,” he said at an event with foreign investors over the weekend, followed by cheers from the audience.
Deepening tensions further, Starlink refused to carry out orders from Brazil’s telecom regulator, Anatel, to prevent its hundreds of thousands of users from accessing X in the country. Starlink told Anatel it would only comply with the court order once its accounts were unfrozen, the regulator said Monday.
“Long-term investors who know Brazil likely won’t be swayed for now,” said Eric Farnsworth, a former senior American diplomat and analyst at the Council of the Americas policy group in Washington. “But Brazil’s spat with the owner of the world’s loudest microphone only contributes to a narrative of uncertainty and increasing government skepticism of the private sector.”
The ban on X caps months of back-and-forth retaliation between Musk and the country, which started in April when de Moraes ordered X to take down several accounts deemed to be spreading what he called misinformation.
Musk initially balked at the order and closed X’s offices in Brazil. The court issued an ultimatum last week: either appoint a legal representative in Brazil or face a ban, which took effect after Musk didn’t respond.
Jurists in Brazil said both Musk and de Moraes were to blame for the recent escalation in tensions, accusing the Supreme Court of overreach but also criticizing Musk for flouting basic laws.
De Moraes first started investigating Musk in April of this year as part of a wider probe that he launched three years earlier into so-called digital militias—what he calls criminal organizations that are alleged to have used social media to organize what the court labeled as anti-democratic acts.
In January 2023, thousands of anti-government protesters stormed Congress, the presidential palace and the Supreme Court in what da Silva has claimed was a coup attempt on his leftist government. Those protests, drawing together rightwing supporters from across the country, were largely organized online via X and other social-media networks, putting even more pressure on the Supreme Court to act. Many of them contend via X that Bolsonaro is the rightful president of Brazil, saying he and not da Silva won the 2022 election, which is false.
In his latest decision to ban X, de Moraes accused the platform of turning the internet into “a place of total impunity, a lawless land,” citing cases in which criminals had posted the personal details and photos of police officers, inciting attacks on them and their families.
Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia, said that Brazil’s Supreme Court was right to stand its ground with Musk. He said this should be seen positively by investors as a sign that courts won’t bow to pressure, even when it comes from one of the world’s most famous billionaires.
“Everyone else has to comply with the law,” Tobias said, “So why not Musk?”
Ryan Dubé and Silvina Frydlewsky contributed to this article.
Write to Samantha Pearson at samantha.pearson@wsj.com
Elon Musk Inc.
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