The court has fully suspended the platform in Brazil for noncompliance in appointing a local legal representative.
The Supreme Court of Brazil has ordered the full suspension of Elon Musk’s social media platform X in the country for refusing to name an in-country legal representative.
Brazil’s Justice Alexandre de Moraes issued the order on Aug. 30, putting millions of users of the platform in Latin America’s biggest economy on track to be cut off.
De Moraes’s order, which gives internet service providers and app stores five days to block access to X, also announced a daily penalty of $8,900 for users in Brazil who use a virtual private network to evade the ban.
In his decision, de Moraes said X will remain blocked until it complies with his orders.
“Elon Musk showed his total disrespect for Brazilian sovereignty and, in particular, for the judiciary, setting himself up as a true supranational entity and immune to the laws of each country,” de Moraes wrote.
The suspension was widely anticipated as X said on Aug. 29 that it expected to be shut down in Brazil because of what it described as “illegal orders” to censor political opponents.
“Soon, we expect Judge Alexandre de Moraes will order X to be shut down in Brazil—simply because we would not comply with his illegal orders to censor his political opponents,” X said in a statement, in which the platform claimed that de Moraes had threatened X’s Brazilian legal representative with imprisonment and later froze all of her bank accounts.
Musk, who has accused Brazil of censorship, was included in a criminal inquiry into individuals who allegedly spread false information about Brazil’s election and justice system.
The Aug. 30 suspension order follows de Moraes’s Aug. 28 order that gave X just 24 hours to appoint a new legal representative for X Brazil in response to a petition filed against the company. In the Aug. 28 order, the judge warned that failure to comply would result in the platform’s suspension.
A spokesperson for X pointed to the Aug. 29 statement in response to a request for comment on the suspension order.
By Tom Ozimek
