Brazil’s Supreme Court on Friday ordered a statewide ban of Elon Musk’s social network X after the business promised to disobey previous court decisions requiring content moderation and the appointment of a legal representative in the country.
The action is the most recent development in a long-running dispute between Elon Musk and Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, which also resulted in the freezing of Starlink’s Brazilian bank accounts.
The social media site will be placed under “immediate and complete suspension” by Alexandre de Moraes until it complies with all court decisions and pays any outstanding fines.
The dispute started in April when the judge ruled that many X accounts should be suspended for allegedly disseminating false material.
Reacting to the decision, X owner Elon Musk said: “Free speech is the bedrock of democracy and an unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is destroying it for political purposes.”
The court’s first 51-page order against X was suspended in part by a second order issued hours later.
De Moraes originally told tech giants like Apple and Google five days to cease providing X downloads in their app stores and to stop allowing users to access X using VPN programs.
The second ruling removed that deadline and postponed the implementation of these provisions to provide X more time to pay fines and appoint legal counsel.
The Brazilian Supreme Court declared on Wednesday that Musk and X would either have to designate legal representation for their company there within 24 hours or else suffer a “penalty of suspension of activities” across the country. Thursday night was the deadline.
Following Justice Moraes’ threat of arrest for failing to comply with orders to erase specific accounts that the judge alleged violated Brazilian regulations, Musk closed X’s office in Brazil last week.
X declared that it thought Justice Moraes’ directives were illegal and that making them public would violate their privacy.
We earlier reported that the National Data Protection Authority (ANPD) of Brazil has decided to immediately revoke Meta’s updated privacy policy on the use of individual user data for generative AI system training within the nation.
