Elon Musk at a Neuralink event. Image: Steve Jurvetson/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
A panel of judges have agreed to uphold the ban and one of the judges said the size of one’s bank account does not create a ‘strange immunity from jurisdiction’.
Brazil’s Supreme Court has unanimously voted to uphold a national ban on Elon Musk’s social media platform X.
Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes issued a ban on the platform last week after X failed to name a new legal representative within a 24-hour deadline. X also faced court orders to block certain accounts, something the site refused to comply with.
In a Supreme Court vote yesterday (2 September), five Brazilian judges voted to uphold the ban. One of the judges – Flávio Dino – said that economic power or the size of one’s bank account does not give “strange immunity from jurisdiction”. Dino also said that he could revisit his decision in the future if the company corrected its “illegal conduct”, The Guardian reports.
While most of the judges fully supported the decision, Luiz Fux had reservations about a fine being implemented on those who try to circumvent the ban by using a VPN. Fux said only people who post prohibited content should be fined.
The decision to uphold the ban is a blow for X, as Brazil is its sixth largest market with more than 21m users. The ban has also been a boon for competing sites – Bluesky recently reported an increase of 1m users over a three-day period.
Musk continues to respond negatively about the situation on X – he has referred to Moraes as a “dictator” and a “criminal” in his posts. He is also using the situation as fuel to build support for Donald Trump in the US presidential election. In a reply on X, Musk said Apple and Google are being forced to remove X from their app stores in Brazil and that “this will happen here if Kamala is elected”.
Why was the ban implemented?
Under Brazilian law, social networks must have a representative to receive and consider government takedown notices about political misinformation. But X closed its Brazil office earlier this month and said Moraes threatened one of its legal representatives with arrest if the company did not agree to remove some content from its platform.
The judge had ordered X to block certain accounts amid a crackdown on so-called “digital militias” that were accused of spreading fake news during former president Jair Bolsonaro’s reign. X has described these requests as illegal and claimed Moraes was attempting to “censor his political opponents”.
X recently said that it will not comply in secret with illegal orders, “unlike other social media and technology platforms”. But reports last year claimed the platform had at least partially complied with almost all takedown requests from governments since Musk took over the platform, with roughly half of those requests stemming from Turkey, AlJazeera reports.
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Elon Musk at a Neuralink event. Image: Steve Jurvetson via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
