Elon Musk’s X started to go dark on in Brazil at the order of the top court as Latin America’s largest nation became the latest front in a global fight over the regulation of free speech on the internet.
As the site went down, politicians hurried to share reactions to judicial efforts to police content before they lost access. Celebrities fired off posts directing fans to other networks, while experts in internet law opined — including in posts on the fading X — on the long-term ramifications.
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Many of X’s 20 million users in Brazil, the world’s fifth-most-online nation, were left to scour rival platforms after the Supreme Court ordered the immediate suspension late Friday because the billionaire refused to name a legal representative for the social network in the country.
The question on Saturday was whether Musk would back down. The immediate signal from the world’s richest man was an attack on Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who handed down the decision and has become the face of one of the biggest conflicts playing out globally over how much control governments have over social media.
“He has supreme executive, judicial and legislative power, aka dictator,” Musk posted on Saturday.
The extent of the X blackout wasn’t immediately clear on Saturday. Earlier in the day, thousands of users reported problems to Downdetector, a website that tracks service disruptions. The site registered a spike of complaints just after midnight that continued throughout the day. “Sorry something went wrong,” X’s site told users.
As of late Friday, social media network Bluesky had reported 500,000 new sign-ups in Brazil over a 48-hour period, which included many of the nation’s well-known left-wing politicians. The ban also stripped thousands of candidates of a popular campaign tool, especially in conservative circles, ahead of local elections taking place in October across more than 5,000 Brazilian municipalities.
Thaynara Oliveira Gomes, a Brazilian influencer who has over one million followers on X, said in a text message: “It is regrettable to lose this platform because it is extremely popular in Brazil.”
While the US tends toward strong free-speech protections, many countries are taking aggressive steps to make companies more accountable for their online content. France just charged Telegram CEO Pavel Durov for allowing criminal activity on the messaging app. In Brazil, Moraes is spearheading a wide-reaching investigation into hate speech and vitriol that he says is endangering democratic institutions.
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“This is yet another chapter to hold technology companies accountable in the country,” said Clara Iglesias Keller, a researcher at the WZB Berlin Social Sciences Center who studies information technology regulation. “But this case has whole different level of visibility.”
Praise or condemnation of the ban largely fell along party lines. Conservatives have long slammed Moraes for attacking their cause. Supporters of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva often praise the judge for cleaning up the internet.
Gleisi Hoffmann, the president of Lula’s Workers’ Party, called Musk “a spoiled, overbearing and arrogant playboy” in a post on Instagram on Friday. He “dreams of new foreign interference in the sovereignty of South American countries.”
The bulk of the accounts that Moraes ordered X to take down belong to supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who used the platform to question the right-wing leader’s election loss in 2022 and praise rioters who later stormed the capital on the false contention that Lula stole the vote.
Moraes’ latest move pours gasoline on longstanding accusations of censorship of right-wing politicians, who rely on social media to interact with their supporters. Many have called for impeaching the judge, but those efforts have so far failed to gain traction in Congress.Al
“Alexandre de Moraes equates us to countries like Iran, North Korea and China by banning X,” representative Julia Zanatta, a conservative lawmaker who has been critical of Moraes, said in a statement. “We are already officially a dictatorship.”
Moraes’ order will likely have to move through the court’s plenary, though political observers say it’s unlikely to be overturned. Many internet users in Brazil raised alarm about an initial order threatening anyone using a virtual private network, or VPN, to access X with a daily fine of 50,000 reais ($8,900).
Hours after his initial decision, Moraes amended the order leaving out his directives to app stores to remove VPNs. But some digital experts remain concerned about the orders’ lasting effects for internet users.
It’s “the most extreme judicial decision we’ve had so far in 30 years of the internet in Brazil,” said Carlos Affonso Souza, head of the Institute for Technology & Society at Rio de Janeiro State University.
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