Brazilian Judge Blocks Access to X, Musk Says This Is 'Destroying' Free Speech 'for Political Purposes'
By Becca Lower
It's been quite a momentous day in the legal sense for Elon Musk, the owner of social media platform X and space exploration firm Space X, among other companies. Earlier on Friday, we shared that he notched a win in a Texas courtroom, when a District Court judge ruled that a lawsuit that X filed against the progressive activist media organization, Media Matters, could go forward.
My colleague Susie Moore wrote that "Elon Musk's X Corp. scored a legal victory on Thursday as a Texas judge denied the Motion to Dismiss filed by Media Matters in the social media platform's defamation suit," noting that "the case will now proceed with discovery and currently is set to go to trial on April 7, 2025."
Elon Musk Notches Legal Victory As TX Judge Rules X Suit Against Media Matters May Proceed
On a less cheerful note, I previously wrote about the ongoing legal wranglings between Musk and authoritarian Brazilian President Lula's (Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva) government--via the agency of a corrupt justice on the country's Supreme Court:
Brazilian Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered Elon Musk's social media platform X, via a legal representative in the country, to suspend the accounts of political enemies (in other words, supporters of Bolsonaro), who the government is investigating. If the X lawyer disobeyed, he would be arrested--and there would be personal consequences for X owner Elon Musk, too:
Mr Moraes had ordered X accounts he has accused of spreading disinformation - many supporters of the former right-wing president Jair Bolsanaro - must be blocked while they are under investigation.
After X owner Musk criticised Mr Moraes, the judge ordered 100,000 reais ($19,774; £15,670) fines a day for any account that X reactivated, and stressed the possible liability of the company's legal representatives in Brazil if this were to happen.
He also put Mr Musk under investigation for charges including the obstruction of justice.
X decided to instead close its operations/office in Brazil, while leaving the platform active. Musk wrote in an X post that "[t]he decision to close the 𝕏 office in Brazil was difficult, but, if we had agreed to @alexandre’s (illegal) secret censorship and private information handover demands, there was no way we could explain our actions without being ashamed."
Read more: Elon Musk Stands Up to Brazil's Thug Supreme Court Ordering X to Censor Lula's Political Enemies
But on Friday, the judge ordered X to go dark for millions of users in the South American nation, effectively doing damage to free speech there:
Alexandre de Moraes, a Brazilian Supreme Court justice, ordered Brazil’s telecom agency to block access to X across the nation of 200 million because the company lacked a necessary legal representative in Brazil.
Mr. Musk closed X’s office in Brazil last week after Justice Moraes threatened arrests for ignoring his orders to remove X accounts that he said broke Brazilian laws.
X said that it viewed Justice Moraes’ sealed orders as illegal and that it planned to publish them.
Moraes also tried to squelch dissent among the people over the ban, but was forced to walk it back after "swift backlash":
Justice Moraes had also said that any person in Brazil who tried to still use X via common privacy software called a virtual private network, or VPN, could be fined nearly $9,000 a day. But after swift backlash across Brazil, including from academics who have supported him, he reversed that move in an amended order late Friday.
Musk responded to the judge's move on Friday in an X post:
Free speech is the bedrock of democracy and an unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is destroying it for political purposes https://t.co/eqbowALCeu
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 30, 2024
If you can't read the post, it read:
Free speech is the bedrock of democracy and an unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is destroying it for political purposes
This comes after Moraes further ordered that the assets for SpaceX's Starlink satellite-internet service be frozen, "to try to collect $3 million in fines he has levied against X." SpaceX has no connection to the social media platform, and the move is seen as an effort to inflict maximum financial pain for Musk and his company. We'll keep you posted on where this goes next.
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