Justice Alexandre de Moraes of the Supreme Court of Brazil has ordered the operations of X (formerly Twitter) to be “immediately suspended” and threatened draconian fines against anyone trying to sidestep the ban.
De Moraes demanded that X censor several accounts that “spread disinformation” by criticizing him, but the platform’s owner Elon Musk refused.
On Friday, the judge ordered the platform banned in Brazil, giving Google and Apple five days to remove X from their app stores. He also threatened a fine of around 50,000 Brazilian real (approximately $8,874) a day for anyone using a virtual private network (VPN) to get around the ban.
“Free speech is the bedrock of democracy and an unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is destroying it for political purposes,” Musk said in response to the order.
Musk also called de Moraes “an evil dictator cosplaying as a judge” and accused President Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva of being his “lapdog.”
On Thursday, de Moraes froze the accounts of Starlink, a subsidiary of Musk’s SpaceX, saying this was needed to ensure the payment of fines levied against X for failing to appoint a legal representative. Musk objected to the “absolutely illegal action” taken without any due process, pointing out that X and SpaceX are “two completely different companies with different shareholders.”
According to X’s Global Government Affairs team, de Moraes “threatened our Brazilian legal representative with imprisonment. Even after she resigned, he froze all of her bank accounts.”
“Our challenges against his manifestly illegal actions were either dismissed or ignored,” the company said, pledging to make public all the related court filings in the interest of transparency. “Unlike other social media and technology platforms, we will not comply in secret with illegal orders.”
The US embassy in Brazil said only it was “monitoring the situation,” adding that “freedom of expression is a fundamental pillar in a healthy democracy.”
The dispute began earlier this year, when de Moraes ordered X to suspend the accounts belonging to several supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro, calling them “digital militants” who spread “disinformation” about himself and the court. Musk refused, calling the order a violation of Brazilian laws.