A few months back, Brazil had warned Elon Musk-owned X(formerly Twitter) that it would ban the platform if it didn’t comply with its laws. Now, a Brazilian judge has officially banned X. This follows a months-long conflict between Elon Musk and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. Justice de Moraes issued this order on August 30th. He has now asked Brazil’s communications agency to limit access to the platform within 24 hours.
Back in April, Justice de Moraes started the investigation into X after Elon Musk decided to reactivate accounts that the platform had previously been ordered to block by Brazilian authorities. In response to this, Musk shuttered X’s offices in Brazil. He said that Justice de Moraes had threatened to arrest the company’s local legal representative if they did not comply with their orders. Musk describes these as “censorship orders.”
Justice de Moraes then warned that if X doesn’t appoint a new legal representative within a given time frame, X will be banned in the country. Fast-forward to today, X is now officially banned in Brazil.
Of course, Musk did not take it well. If you take a look at his X wall right now, it is filled with posts showing his disapproval of the order. In one such Tweet, Musk said, “𝕏 is the most used news source in Brazil. It is what the people want. Now, the tyrant de Voldemort is crushing the people’s right to free speech.”
On Saturday morning, when Brazilians woke up, they were unable to access X. A lot of popular accounts took to the platform to share that they would not be able to continue their operations owing to the ban. This also sparked a protest from the Brazilians online as they said that they felt disconnected from the world and that this was an attack on free speech. VPN searches also saw an increase.