The Supreme Court of Brazil ordered access to X suspended in the country of more than 200 million people as a prominent judge continued to dispute with the site’s owner Elon Musk.
Musk has been embroiled in a months-long feud with Supreme Court Justice Alexander de Moraes over X’s moderation policies. Earlier this year, Moraes opened an investigation into X after Musk rejected a court order to block accounts supporting former right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro , which allegedly spreads fake news and hate speech. News of X being blocked in Brazil was first reported by the Associated Press and others.
The AP also reported that Internet service providers and app stores in Brazil have five days to comply with the ruling. “Given the number of ISPs in Brazil, it may take some time to fully implement the filtering measure, depending on how they handle it,” said Isik Mater, director of research at Netblocks, a group of the civil society that monitors internet censorship.
“Freedom of speech is the foundation of democracy,” Musk claimed in an X post after the ban was announced. He also claimed that Moraes was a “pseudo-judge” who was “destroying him for political purposes”.
Internet companies must have a legal representative in Brazil who can act as an intermediary between the government and the corporation. X currently does not have one, as the site closed its offices in Brazil earlier this year after it said Moraes threatened the legal representative with arrest as part of the investigation. The deadline set by the High Court for X to appoint a new representative expired on Thursday evening.
“Soon we expect Judge Alexandre de Moraes to order X to be jailed in Brazil – simply because we will not comply with his illegal orders to censor his political opponents,” a post Thursday night on X’s global affairs account claimed. “These enemies include a duly elected senator and a 16-year-old girl, among others.”
Musk cited this post and claimed that Moraes was an “evil dictator playing judge.”
In his statement, X framed the court’s rulings as violating Brazil’s own laws, saying they were “illegal” and said he would publish all related court documents.
