A judge in Brazil has ordered the suspension of X after owner Elon Musk failed to designate a new legal representative for the country, according to reports from Bloomberg and local news outlet Poder360.
Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes told the National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel) to limit access to X within 24 hours and has given Apple and Google five days to remove X from their mobile app stores. The country will also impose daily fines of $50,000 Brazilian real (~$8,900 USD) to people who try to access X through a virtual private network (VPN), as reported by Poder360.
Earlier this month, Musk closed X’s offices in Brazil, saying de Moraes threatened to arrest the company’s legal representative for not complying with “censorship orders.” Brazil’s Supreme Court notified X on Wednesday that if it didn’t appoint a new legal representative within 24 hours, it would be banned.
“Free speech is the bedrock of democracy and an unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is destroying it for political purposes,” Musk said in a statement on X following the decision.
Musk and de Moraes have been feuding for months. The Brazilian justice opened an investigation into X in April after Musk said he reactivated accounts that X was ordered to block over the spread of misinformation. As reported by The New York Times, many of the accounts de Moraes ordered X to block are linked to supporters of the right-wing former President Jair Bolsonaro.
“We are absolutely not insisting that other countries have the same free speech laws as the United States,” X said in a Thursday evening post from its global government affairs account. “The fundamental issue at stake here is that Judge de Moraes demands we break Brazil’s own laws. We simply won’t do that.” In that post, X also said it would publish “all of Judge de Moraes’ illegal demands and all related court filings.”
Brazil requires major platforms to have a legal representative in the country. It has briefly banned other major social platforms in the past as well, including Telegram and WhatsApp.
Starlink, part of another Elon Musk-affiliated company, SpaceX, said Thursday that de Moraes also gave an order that froze Starlink’s finances. “This order is based on an unfounded determination that Starlink should be responsible for the fines levied — unconstitutionally — against X,” according to Starlink.
Update, August 30th: Added more information about the ban.
