Brazil will suspend X from operation after billionaire Elon Musk’s company failed to name a legal representative in the country, a Brazilian Supreme Court justice ordered Friday.
The ban is the culmination of a monthslong feud between Justice Alexandre de Moraes and Musk over multiple matters. Moraes specifically asked internet providers in the country to block access to the site.
X said Thursday it would break the legal seal on Moraes’s “illegal demands” and related court filings.
“Unlike other social media and technology platforms, we will not comply in secret with illegal orders,” the company said in a statement.
The Brazilian Supreme Court warned the company Wednesday that it had 24 hours to name a new legal representative before it would suspend the service. X’s previous legal representative, the company said, was threatened with imprisonment and added that Brazil froze her bank accounts even after she resigned.
“Our challenges against his manifestly illegal actions were either dismissed or ignored,” the company said. “Judge de Moraes’ colleagues on the Supreme Court are either unwilling or unable to stand up to him.”
“We are absolutely not insisting that other countries have the same free speech laws as the United States. The fundamental issue at stake here is that Judge de Moraes demands we break Brazil’s own laws. We simply won’t do that,” it added.
When the court demanded Musk name a legal representative, he posted a picture on X of a piece of toilet paper with Moraes’s face on it.
Musk closed X’s office in Brazil last week after Moraes threatened arrests if the company didn’t ban X accounts that he said broke the nation’s laws. Moraes has the power, since the country’s 2022 elections, to order social media accounts he deems a threat to democracy and has often wielded that power.
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Brazil will now be without one of the world’s top social media platforms. But Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp remain the country’s top-used apps, with X outside the top 3 in 2022.
Brazil ranks fourth globally with more than 25 million downloads of the X app, according to Appfigures.
