High Noon at X Corral: Brazilian Justice Faces Off Elon Musk

On Monday, the federal supreme court of Brazil voted unanimously to uphold the ban on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. Last week, Alexandre de Moraes, one of the court’s justices, ordered the shutdown of X for its failure to comply with Brazilian law and its refusal to appoint a legal representative in the country.

The platform went blank over the weekend as service providers scrambled to block access. Justice De Moraes also decreed that anyone using ‘technological subterfuge’ such as a virtual private network (VPN) to evade his ban would risk a fine of €8,000 per day.

This more controversial part of Justice De Moraes’ ruling was also upheld by the court. Justices were particularly irked by the refusal of X-owner Elon Musk, the unruly US tech magnate and free speech absolutist, to take down accounts used to promote far-right conspiracy theories and hate speech. Rather than comply with the order, Mr Musk closed the local X office and fired its employees so that they couldn’t be held accountable for the company’s actions.

Mr Musk, who also owns a (controlling) forty-percent stake in satellite internet provider Starlink, yesterday informed Brazil’s telecom regulator Anatel that the space-based network would not block or restrict access to X. Earlier, Starlink had its Brazilian bank accounts frozen to ensure the payment of financial penalties. The social media platform has already been fined $3 million. Each day the platform refuses to comply with the judicial order, another $20,000 accrues.

Tribes Uplinked

The Starlink satellite network, operated by SpaceX, is widely used throughout Brazil’s more far-flung regions such as the Amazon rainforest and the Pantanal wetlands where land-based connections are scarce and slow. Starlink is estimated to have over 250,000 clients in the country, including many municipalities, government agencies, and even remote indigenous tribes. Mr Musk has assured Starlink customers that the network will not suspend its services over the inability to make and process payments.

Anatel president Carlos Biagorri said that the agency had informed the judge of Starlink’s refusal to comply with his order and speculated that the network’s license to operate in Brazil could be revoked. This would ‘hypothetically’ stop the company from serving its clients in the country. Mr Biagorri admitted that Starlink could still operate but would have to do so outside the law and without the 23 ground stations it operates in Brazil to improve signal quality.

With its ruling to maintain the ban, the federal supreme court placed Brazil alongside several unsavoury countries such as Russia, China, Myanmar, North Korea, and Venezuela that also ban X. In 2022, Mr De Moraes repeatedly threatened to shut down Telegram over its refusal to block hate-speech accounts. In 2015 and 2016, messaging service WhatApp was blocked on several occasions after declining requests by law enforcement agencies for user information and chat transcripts.

Mr Musk travelled to Brazil in 2022 to announce Starlink’s arrival and met then-president Jair Bolsonaro, a rightwing firebrand, from whom he received the Order of Defence Merit for his promise to deliver free high speed internet to over 19,000 schools. Two years after the visit, Brazilian officials have yet to find records of Starlink providing internet to schools.

Mr Bolsonaro regularly showered friends and family with medals and honours, including his wife and sons who between them collected about a dozen distinctions, leading Istoé, a news weekly, to conclude that the Bolsonaro administration had morphed into a ‘medal dispensary’.

Stoking Upheaval

Justice De Moraes’ ruling on X culminates a long-running crusade to clean up the internet. He initiated his fight after X – then called Twitter – was found to have been instrumental in stoking the upheaval that followed Mr Bolsonaro’s failed attempt to secure a second term in office. The incumbent was soundly defeated in the late-October 2022 runoff election. With rumours of a coup swirling the country, the courts fought a losing battle against widespread disinformation regarding voter fraud and suppression and the wholesale rigging of voting machines.

Over the weekend, X started to publish the sealed orders it received from Justice De Moraes directing it to close certain accounts. Meanwhile, the notoriously short-fused Mr Musk blew his top, telling his 180 million-plus X-followers that the justice is a threat to free speech, aims to turn Brazil into a dictatorship, and should be put on trial ‘for his crimes’.

Former President Jair Bolsonaro, still a target of investigations and facing multiple legal threats, from inciting an uprising to harassing a humpback whale whilst on a jet-ski, joined in, calling the justice “a mean-spirited scoundrel, brat, prowler, and wannabe dictator.”

Sociologist Celso Rocha de Barros, also a columnist at the iconic Folha De Säo Paulo newspaper, cautioned against depicting the feud as a conflict between some judge and some X users: “De Moraes’ decisions could have been reversed by the other justices of the supreme court. The people who had their social media accounts suspended were Bolsonaro militants who supported his radicalisation.”

Supremely Swift

Mr De Barros emphasised that the supreme court acted with surprising swiftness to stop a massive coup attempt, lead by the former president and with the participation of far-right generals and the commander of the navy.

Mr Musk has now called out the judge by revealing the sealed orders he issued to X which include demands to silence sitting members of parliament and numerous journalists: “These are the most draconian demands of any country on Earth,” Mr Musk added before signing off by reminding the justice that “karma is a bitch.”

Predictably, über-nationalist supporters of Justice De Moraes invoke Brazil’s cherished ‘sovereignty’ to do as it pleases. Without a trace of irony, secretary of state for social communication – there is such a thing – Paulo Pimenta turned to X before it was taken down to vent his anger: “We will not be intimidated. Our Country is sovereign and no one is going to impose their authoritarian will and enforce the logic that money makes their ‘business model’ above the Federal Constitution [sic].”

President Luis ‘Lula’ da Silva also weighed in and lost some of his composure in the process: “Just because this dude has a lot of money, he cannot go around insulting us.” The Brazilian president, celebrated throughout the developing world but considerably less popular at home, frequently taunts Mr Musk – often on X – who promptly returns the favour, reducing their feud to the level of the playground antics of unruly toddlers.

Cover photo: Former minister of justice Alexandre de Moraes in 2017 accepted his nomination to the Federal Supreme Court.

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© 2017 Photo by Rodrigues Pozzebom / Agência Brasil