Brazil’s Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered the National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel) to restrict access to X within 24 hours and gave Apple and Google five days to remove X from their mobile app stores. The country will also reportedly fine people 50,000 Brazilian reals (approximately $8,900) per day for trying to access X via a virtual private network (VPN). Pod360.
Earlier this month, Musk closed X’s offices in Brazil, saying DeMoraes threatened to arrest the company’s legal representative for not complying with “censorship orders.” Brazil’s Supreme Court informed X on Wednesday that if he does not appoint a new legal representative within 24 hours, he will be banned.
“Free speech is the cornerstone of democracy, and an unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is destroying it for political purposes,” Musk said. In a statement about X Make the following decisions.
Musk and DeMorais have been feuding for months. Musk said a Brazilian judge opened an investigation into X in April after he reactivated an account that had been blocked for spreading misinformation. It is reported new york timesMany of the accounts de Moraes ordered X to block were linked to supporters of right-wing former President Jair Bolsonaro.
“We will never insist that other countries have the same free speech laws as the United States,” X said in a post on his Global Government Affairs account late Thursday. “The fundamental issue here is that Judge de Moraes is asking us to violate Brazil’s own laws. We simply will not do that. In that post, court documents”.
Brazil requires major platforms to have legal representatives in the country. It has briefly banned other major social platforms in the past, including Telegram and WhatsApp.
Starlink, owned by SpaceX, another Elon Musk company, said Thursday that DeMorais also issued an order freezing Starlink’s finances. “This order is based on an unfounded determination that Starlink should be responsible for the (unconstitutional) fine imposed on X,” Starlink said.
Updated on August 30th: Added more information about the ban.
