Brazil threatens to ban Elon Musk’s X

Brazil’s Supreme Court on Wednesday gave Elon Musk 24 hours to name a legal representative for X in Brazil or face a ban of his social network across the nation of 200 million.

Musk closed X’s office in Brazil last week in protest of orders from a Brazilian Supreme Court justice to suspend certain accounts. If X refuses to comply, it could lose access to one of its largest markets outside the United States — a blow as the company struggles to regain revenue after Musk battled with advertisers and told them not to spend on the platform.

The court posted its order on X on Wednesday night, suggesting that Musk had until about 8 p.m. local time Thursday to respond.

The moment is one of the biggest tests yet for Musk’s efforts to mold X to his personal ideology, and how he responds will shed light on how far he is willing to take his stated commitment to protecting his social network from what he calls censorship.

X and Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the possible ban.

Musk has been enmeshed in a monthslong feud with Alexandre de Moraes, a Brazilian Supreme Court justice whom he has accused of censoring conservative voices online. Moraes has ordered the suspension of more than 100 X accounts in what he says is a battle against misinformation, hate speech and attacks on democracy.

Most of the accounts that Moraes has targeted belong to right-wing supporters of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s former president. Some of them questioned Bolsonaro’s 2022 election loss and sympathized with protesters who raided Brazil’s halls of power, hoping to invoke a military takeover.

Musk has vocally supported Bolsonaro, and worked with him on an effort to bring Musk’s internet service, Starlink, to Brazil.

Since April, Musk has made Moraes one of his most frequent targets, calling him a dictator and accusing him of violating Brazilian laws with his orders to suspend accounts. Moraes, in turn, said Musk had become a subject of a Brazilian federal investigation into “fake news.”

Moraes has said Brazilian law requires tech companies to have a legal representative in the country to operate an online service there. When the messaging service Telegram failed to respond to Brazil’s Supreme Court in 2022, Moraes began the process of banning the service in the country. After Telegram quickly responded, he reversed course.

WhatsApp was also briefly banned in Brazil in 2016 after it did not comply with court orders to turn over user data.

Musk bought X in 2022, pledging to remove many of its rules and transform it into an arena for free and open communication, even if discussions there become hostile. He said he would remove content only to comply with laws in the countries where X operated. However, he has since challenged content removal orders in Brazil and Australia.

X, formerly known as Twitter, has been banned abroad before. In June 2021, the government of Nigeria banned the platform after it deleted posts from the country’s president at the time, Muhammadu Buhari, that threatened violence. Access was restored about seven months later, after the company agreed to create a legal entity in the country.

In India, the government has required X to establish a local presence, and threatened to detain or arrest its employees if the company does not comply with legal demands. The service has also been temporarily blocked or throttled in several countries during protests, in an attempt to prevent demonstrators from using X to coordinate.