California: Social media platform X said on Saturday it will shut down its operations in Brazil with “immediate effect” and blamed Brazil’s top judge, Alexandre de Moraes, for its decision.
The company’s decision comes after a legal battle with Alexandre de Moraes over the platform’s rights and responsibilities in countering disinformation, Al Jazeera reported.
X’s Global Government Affairs team, via its official @GlobalAffairs account, has accused Alexandre de Moraes of threatening his legal representative in Brazil with arrest for failing to comply with his censorship orders. They claimed that instead of complying with the law, Moraes intimidated his staff in Brazil and described his actions as “incompatible with democratic governance.”
The social media giant posted images of a document purportedly signed by Moraes that says a daily fine of 20,000 reais and an arrest warrant would be imposed against X’s representative, Rachel Nova Conceicao, if the platform does not fully comply with Moraes’ orders, Al Jazeera reported.
In a statement, X’s Global Government Affairs team said: “Last night, Alexandre de Moraes threatened our legal representative in Brazil with arrest if we did not comply with his censorship orders. He did so in a secret order, which we are sharing here to expose his actions. Despite the fact that our numerous appeals to the Supreme Court went unheard, the Brazilian public was not informed about these orders, and our Brazilian staff having no responsibility or control over whether content is blocked on our platform, Moraes has chosen to threaten our staff in Brazil rather than respect the law or due process.”
“As a result, to protect the safety of our staff, we have made the decision to close our operation in Brazil, effective immediately. The X service remains available to the people of Brazil. We are deeply saddened that we have been forced to make this decision. The responsibility lies solely with Alexandre de Moraes. His actions are incompatible with a democratic government. The people of Brazil have a choice to make: democracy or Alexandre de Moraes,” he added.
The move follows a legal battle between Moraes, who has said he is trying to combat the spread of misinformation online, and X owner Elon Musk.
Elon Musk also reacted to the decision, calling the case of Alexandre de Moraes a “complete disgrace to justice.”
Responding to the Global Government Affairs team’s statement, Musk said of X: “Due to the demands of ‘Justice’ @Alexandre in Brazil that would force us to (secretly) violate Brazilian, Argentine, US and international laws, X has no choice but to shut down our local operations in Brazil. This is an absolute disgrace to justice.”
Earlier this year, Alexandre de Moraes ordered X to block certain accounts accused of spreading false information and hate messages, including some accounts belonging to supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, Al Jazeera reported.
Bolsonaro repeatedly claimed Brazil’s electronic voting system was vulnerable to fraud ahead of a hotly contested election in 2022. Months after facing defeat to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a mob of Bolsonaro supporters stormed Brazil’s main state institutions to express anger over the results.
Moraes, who heads Brazil’s Supreme Electoral Court, said that “freedom of expression does not mean freedom of aggression.” “It does not mean freedom to defend tyranny,” he added.
Earlier this year, Moraes launched an investigation into the billionaire after Musk said he would reactivate accounts on X that the judge had ordered blocked.
Following Musk’s announcement, representatives of the social media platform told Brazil’s Supreme Court that X would comply with the legal rulings, according to the Al Jazeera report.
In early April, lawyers representing X in Brazil told the Supreme Court that “operational failures” had allowed users it had ordered to block to remain active on the platform, after Moraes asked the social media platform to share details of why it had allegedly failed to fully comply with its rulings.
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