Five Brazilian Supreme Court justices today voted to uphold a decision that requires the National Telecommunications Agency, Anatel, to block access to Elon Musk’s X Corp. platform.
Millions of X users in Brazil found themselves without X over the weekend as the country’s internet providers and mobile phone companies restricted access. Alexandre de Moraes (pictured), an influential supreme court judge, stated that X had refused to take down anti-democratic and far-right voices.
Moraes added that X has allowed “the massive spread of disinformation, hate speech and attacks on the democratic rule of law, violating the free choice of the electorate, by keeping voters away from real and accurate information.”
Musk has claimed that Brazil’s government is asking X to censor conservative voices and shackle free speech. Unsurprisingly, Musk took to X and issued a series of criticisms, at one point calling Moraes “Brazil’s Voldemort” and in another post “the dictator of Brazil.”
“He is a dictator and a fraud, not a justice,” Musk wrote on X, which wouldn’t have been seen in Brazil unless someone was using a virtual private network. “The current Brazilian administration likes to wear the cloak of a free democracy while crushing the people under its boot,” Musk said in another post.
Today Judge Flávio Dino said X had ignored a court order to name a legal representative in Brazil, adding that the platform “considered itself above the rule of law.” X had previously been ordered to take down about 140 accounts, including some of the country’s most outspoken conservative pundits and some members of Congress. This included accounts that questioned former President Jair Bolsonaro’s 2022 election loss.
“The repeated noncompliance with supreme court decisions is extremely serious for any citizen or legal entity, be they public or private,” wrote Judge Cristiano Zanin. “No one can seek to perform their activities in Brazil without complying with the laws and the federal constitution.”
Judge Luiz Fux agreed with the ruling but said he had reservations about fining people who use a VPN to access X if they haven’t posted content that could be deemed illegal. As it stands, if any of the 22 million X users in Brazil do hide behind a VPN to get back on the platform, they risk being fined 50,000 Reis, or $8,900, a day, which seems somewhat excessive in a country with a minimum wage of just over $250 a month.
Musk’s company Starlink, which has about 250,000 customers in Brazil, most of them dotted around the Amazon, has refused to comply. Judge Moraes had earlier frozen the finances of Starlink in Brazil in an effort to collect $3 million in fines that have been levied against X.