According to the court decision, the Brazilian telecommunications authority must implement the provisions of the decision within 24 hours.
According to Alexandre de Moraes, X is not doing enough against hate speech and the spread of fake news. At the same time, Musk called the Brazilian judge an “evil dictator”. The Brazilian news portal G1 reported early Saturday that many users of the local mobile phone providers Vivo, Claro and Oi were unable to log into their X accounts.
According to the Downdetector portal, which monitors Internet traffic and outages, the number of access problems began to rise sharply after midnight.
The court initially ordered X to block the accounts of right-wing activists who spread conspiracy theories and disinformation after authorities said the social network had recently been used to organize anti-democracy actions in Brazil.
Musk called the subpoena illegal, and X did not comply with the tribunal’s demand and did not pay the imposed fines. According to a Brazilian newspaper report, the latter amounts to HUF 1.2 billion. However, the Reuters news agency could not confirm this information.
On Thursday, Brazilian judges also froze the accounts of the operator of the Starlink satellites, as the company is also owned by Musk. This is how the tribunal wanted to make Musk pay the fines.
“X is the most used news source in Brazil. This is what the people want,” Musk wrote on X, before adding, referring to the villain from the Harry Potter books, “And now the tyrant Voldemort is destroying people’s right to free speech.”
Musk already closed X’s Brazilian office in mid-August on the grounds that he was afraid of the detention of local representatives.
Moraes issued an ultimatum to Musk this week, giving him 24 hours to appoint a legal representative, otherwise he threatened to ban the social network. Musk missed that deadline.
The billionaire businessman argues that he is protecting freedom of expression. “Alexandre de Moraes is an evil dictator disguised as a judge,” Musk wrote on X.
2024-08-31 15:40:10