Brazil blocks X after Elon Musk opposes investigation into 2023 coup attempt

Brazil’s highest court has ordered internet service providers to block social networking site X (formerly Twitter) after its owner Elon Musk ignored a court order to hire a new lawyer to represent X in the country, as required by local law.

The order issued Friday by Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes is the latest escalation in a months-long dispute stemming from an ongoing investigation into a Jan. 8, 2023, mutiny against the country’s government.

The investigation, which is still ongoing, eventually expanded to include the suspects’ social media activity. That’s where Musk steps in.

In April, he ignored de Moraes’ court orders to block the X accounts of several people suspected of involvement in the 1/8 attack. Earlier this month, Musk shut down X’s operations in Brazil and eliminated its entire staff after de Moraes threatened to arrest his Brazilian lawyer for the company’s ongoing lawbreaking.

But Brazilian law also requires that any company doing business in Brazil — and X continued to provide users with access there — have legal representation in the country. So on Wednesday, de Moraes ordered X to hire a new lawyer to represent it in Brazil within 24 hours, or the site would be blocked. Musk refused, and here we are.

De Moraes gave internet service providers five days to block access to X. After that, anyone or company accessing the platform through a virtual private network (VPN) will be subject to fines of up to $8,900 per day.

“Elon Musk has shown complete disrespect for Brazil’s sovereignty, and in particular for its judiciary, presenting himself as a truly supranational entity, immune to the laws of any country,” de Moraes wrote.

The judge called Musk a “criminal” who intended to “permit the mass spread of disinformation, hate speech, and attacks on the democratic rule of law, undermining the free choice of the electorate by steering voters away from truthful and accurate information.”

“When we tried to defend ourselves in court, Judge de Moraes threatened our Brazilian legal representative with imprisonment. Even after her resignation, he froze all of her bank accounts,” the company said in a statement. “Our allegations of his clearly illegal actions have been dismissed or ignored. Judge de Moraes’ colleagues on the Supreme Court are either unwilling or unable to stand up to him.”

Musk, for his part, has said he’s fighting for “free speech” and says the court orders are essentially a form of censorship. In an earlier statement, the company called de Moraes’ directives “illegal orders to censor his political opponents.”

What is significant, however, is Musk’s response to literal Censorship demands made in other countries were clearly different.

In early 2023, for example, India’s right-wing government ordered Twitter to block references to a BBC documentary criticizing Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The company complied, and when asked about it, Musk said, “the rules in India about what can go on social media are pretty strict, and we can’t go beyond the laws of the land.”

Meanwhile, in May 2023, Twitter also complied with demands from Turkey’s right-wing government to censor dissident accounts during the country’s presidential election. In a statement at the time, a company representative said, “We received what we believed to be a final threat to restrict the service — after several such warnings — and so, in order to keep Twitter accessible over the election weekend, we took action on four accounts and 409 tweets identified by court order.”

Musk later angrily told one critic, “The choice is between restricting Twitter completely or restricting access to certain tweets. Which do you want?

Musk has also never spoken out about the tragic case of Muhammad al-Ghamdi, a retired Saudi teacher who was arrested and sentenced to death last year for government-critical comments he posted on X/Twitter. Coincidentally, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al Saud, a member of the Saudi royal family, is an investor in X.

Musk, who has become an outspoken supporter of far-right politics in recent years, did not comment on differences between Brazil and other countries on issues of “political opponents,” court rulings, laws or account blocking.

To cover the $3 million fine he imposed on X, the judge also froze the finances of Starlink, a satellite internet service that is a subsidiary of Musk’s SpaceX. Musk called de Moraes “the worst kind of criminal” for that.

Starlink, which has more than 250,000 customers, vowed to fight the order, saying in a statement that the fine was “unconstitutional” and was “imposed in secret, without providing Starlink with the due process of law guaranteed by the Brazilian constitution.”

According to CBS News, market research firm Emarketer reports that some 40 million Brazilians, or one-fifth of the population, use X’s service at least once a month.

After losing the 2022 election, supporters of right-wing former President Jair Bolsonaro laid siege to the capital, Brasilia, in an attempt to return him to power. (The attack was inspired by one initiated by Donald Trump two years earlier.) Bolsonaro, who was in the United States that day, denies any involvement, although military commanders later confirmed that he had tried to convince them to support him in a military coup shortly after the election.