The Brazilian Supreme Court has given Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, a strict ultimatum: he must name a formal representative in Brazil within 24 hours, or the platform’s services will be shut down in the country by August 29, 2024.
The order comes after Musk and Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes got into a heated argument. X says that Moraes threatened to arrest its Brazilian legal team, which is why the company said it would shut down its operations in Brazil but keep the service open for users in the country.
We have received further demands for censorship and for the personal account information of our users, impacting not just Brazilians but residents of the United States and Argentina. We share those here in the interests of essential transparency.
— Global Government Affairs (@GlobalAffairs) August 15, 2024
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The fight started when Musk said Moraes was using sneaky methods to get X to remove content. Moraes had said that X was wrong for supposedly letting “misinformation” spread on its website, mostly to people who supported former President Jair Bolsonaro. Supporters of Bolsonaro had a protest against the 2022 election results, which they said were rigged to help President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Because of the violence, Bolsonaro can’t run for office again until 2030.
In response to the continued problems, Musk called Moraes “an evil dictator” and said again that X would not comply with the judge’s requests for censorship. This case brings up bigger problems of free speech and government control over digital media.
People have also compared the situation to the recent arrest of Pavel Durov, co-founder of Telegram, in France, which caused a conversation around the world about how governments should handle online platforms.
