Brazil’s Supreme Court has threatened the world’s richest man, Elon Musk. The top judges warned X ( formerly Twitter) to name legal representative in Brazil within 24 hours or encounter the ban of X in the country.
The dispute began when Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes threatened the X to suspend the numerous social media accounts that support the former president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro. The ex-president whose ruling party was thrown down in early 2023. However, Moraes also claimed that these X users spread false information and hate speech in Brazil. In charge of the combat against fake news, he ordered X to suspend accounts.
Therefore, in response to Moraes’ threats, Elon Musk shut down the legal representative and office in the country. While maintaining the services available for 20 million Brazilian users.
The ongoing conflict between the Brazilian government and a billionaire led to an open investigation against Elon Musk. Musk called the Moreas a dictator who violated the rules of freedom of presenting speech and thoughts. In return, Moreas reminded of to have legal representative in the country is alike comes under the Brazillian laws.
Furthermore, On Aug. 17, X said Moraes threatened to arrest its legal representative in Brazil if they didn’t comply with “his censorship orders.” Musk called the decision to close X’s office in the country “difficult,” in a post, reported by Bloomberg’s post.
Unfortunately, the same case occurred with a messaging app, Telegram in 2022. Moraes also forced Telegram to suspend the account and temporarily shut the service in Brazil. After that, Telegram quickly responded to the Brazilian government.
