The Brazilian judge Alexandre de Moraes has threatened to sue X, the social media giant in Brazil.
The company said Saturday that its executives were “forced” to take this decision after de Moraes had threatened arrests in the event the platform didn’t remove content considered problematic by the Brazilian Government.
The X Global Government Affairs Office announced on the platform that “Alexandre de Moraes, our legal representative for Brazil, threatened us with arrest last night if we did not comply with his censorship order.” “He did this in secret, which we are sharing here to expose his action.”
“Even though our many appeals to Brazil’s Supreme Court were not heard, and the Brazilian public was not informed of these orders, our Brazilian staff had no responsibility or control on whether the content is blocked or not, Moraes chose to threaten our Brazilian staff rather than follow the law or the due process.” To protect our employees, we’ve decided to shut down our Brazil operation immediately.
De Moraes, who accuses the platform of harboring “digital militias” that spread misinformation and hateful materials about former President Jairbolsonaro, ordered X early this year to remove specific accounts.
Elon Musk, X’s owner, said in a post on Saturday that X had no choice but to close its local operations in Brazil due to “Justice’s” (de Moraes) demands, which would have required us to violate (in secret), Brazilian, Argentinian and American law as well as international law. “He is a disgrace to the justice system.”
Musk followed up on this message by writing: “The decision to shut down the X office was difficult but, if [de Moraes] had accepted our (illegally) secret censorship demands and requests for private information, we would have been ashamed.”
X representatives told the Supreme Court of Brazil previously that they would follow any legal rulings ordering censorship of problematic accounts.
When the measures did not materialize, X’s lawyers informed the court that “operational errors” made it impossible to carry out the orders.
Musk says that despite the closing of X’s Brazilian offices, citizens will still be able to access the social media platform.
