Summary
Brazil has banned X, formerly known asTwitter, via a late August 2024 court decision. This turn of events caused manyTwitteraccounts to go dark, with even more of them being set to follow in the days ahead.
The ordeal stems from an April 2024 episode that saw Brazil Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes order an investigation intoTwitter owner and former CEO Elon Muskover fake news dissemination and obstruction of justice. This was preceded by Twitter refusing to comply with the court’s demands to block certain accounts determined to be spreading misinformation in the most populous South American country. Musk responded to this by closing down the company’s Brazil offices in mid-August 2024, claiming Justice de Moraes threatened to have Twitter’s local legal representative arrested for not complying with his “censorship orders.”
Twitter Banned in Brazil After Refusing to Name Legal Representation
On August 29, Justice de Moraes presented Twitter with an ultimatum: appoint a new legal representative in the country within 24 hours or be banned. The company refused to do so, prompting Brazil to start blocking Twitter in the early morning hours on Saturday, The Associated Pressreports. The ban is being enforced by Brazil’s telecommunications authority, Anatel, which started instructing internet service providers to block people’s access to the platform. A number of popularTwitter accountshave gone dark as a result of the move, as many fan pages and meme accounts on the site are run from Brazil. According to a recent Statista study, Twitter had approximately 21.5 million users in the South American country as of early 2024.
Brazilians Face Massive Fines for Circumventing Twitter Ban
Even more accounts are likely to go inactive in the days ahead, as Justice de Moraes gave Google and Apple a five-day deadline to remove Twitter from theirmobile app stores. Neither company has yet complied with the order but is expected to do so shortly, based on historical precedent. The Supreme Court judge highlighted that Brazilians trying to circumvent the Twitter ban using tools like VPNs and proxies face fines of R$50,000 (around $8,900) for each day of being in violation of his order.
Ahead of the sanction order, Musk accused Justice de Moraes of “trying to suspend the only source of truth in Brazil” by banning the most popular news app in the country. Many of the billionaire’s critics have rejected his claim of this ordeal having anything to do with free speech. This perception is largely rooted in accusations that,since Musk bought Twitter, the platform has repeatedly censored political content at the behest of right-wing governments in countries like Turkey and India, suggesting that the entrepreneur only supports free speech he personally agrees with.
