The Supreme Court of Brazil approved the suspension of X | The social network will be blocked before the municipal elections in October

2024-09-02 22:32:47

This Monday morning, the five judges that make up the first chamber of the Supreme Court of Brazil approve, through a virtual vote, the precautionary decision that stop the work of the social network. Network of Elon Musk saw its operations gradually suspended in the Brazilian territory, starting last Saturday morning, due to the repeated disregard of the South African president for many of the judgments of this court. Until the social network complies with “all” court decisions, access to X will not be available through its website or mobile application.

The first vote on the matter is by Alexandre de Moraes, judge of the federal court, who For months he has been fighting with Musk, which has as a backdrop the limits of freedom of expression. The fight began after a judge ordered the suspension of dozens of profiles on this platform, as part of the process of lidiar against the massive spread of fake news. For failure to comply with these orders, Musk even removed his legal representatives from the country, ensuring that they are under the risk of being imprisoned.

“Elon Musk showed his total disregard for Brazilian sovereignty and, in particular, the Court of Justice,” De Moraes said of his decision to stop the platform. In his vote he referred to “repeated, conscious and deliberate failures to comply with court orders and pay fines” imposed by the court on the company, estimated around several hundred dollars 4. This was supported by other members of the court, Flávio Dino, Carmen Lucia Antunes, Luiz Fux and Cristiano Zanin, who spoke in favor of the suspension.

For De Moraes, such behavior is

Musk, for his part, has called the judge a “bad mediator”, in response to the conclusion issued by De Moraes on Wednesday, urging the platform to appoint a local representative, under penalty of suspending his duties. The filing deadline passed on Thursday, and Twitter previously said it expected to be blocked for failing to comply with the court’s “improper orders” seeking to “recognize its political opponents.”
Two of the members of the first chamber of the Supreme Court have been Ministers of Justice during different governments. De Moraes himself, during the administration of independence Michel Temer (2016-2018) and Flávio Dino with the government of Lula. This, for many political analysts, governs the nature of the “opinion” that assumes the highest right attributes to the decision.

Due to the judge’s actions, the company announced the closure of its services in Brazil, although it made the service available to Brazilians until its ban. Before its suspension, X had 22 million users in the country.

“Freedom of expression is the foundation of democracy and an unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is destroying it for political reasons,” Musk responded on his own social network. Judge Flávio Dino, Lula’s former Minister of Justice, emphasized that “Freedom of speech does not protect the repeated violations of the legal system.”

Starlink, another front of conflict

A new combat presence has been added to the measure of caution issued against it location of Starlink, which provides satellite internet services, facing the blockade. This company, a unit of the SpaceX technology company managed by Musk, told Anatel, the telecommunications control group in Brazil, that it would not comply with the order to block the platform in the country until their local accounts are unaccounted for.

The Starlink accounts were blocked by De Moraes in order to guarantee the payment of the fines imposed on him from Brazil who contracted the service could continue to access the social network.

Sanctions against the magnate’s companies were taken in between campaign for municipal elections in October. This has provoked a conflict between the extreme right, led by Jair Bolsonaro, who has shown a close relationship with Musk, and progress, which is in the current government. While Bolsonaro denounced the court process as “rhetorical persecution” against “conservatives”, Lula has declared that any foreign company operating in Brazil must “respect” the country’s judiciary.

The decision to approve the measure by the Supreme Federal Court is part of efforts to prevent the campaign for municipal elections from being flooded with fake news, as happened in the 2018 presidential elections, where Lula won A Bolsonaro who hopes to re-election. During this electoral process, hundreds of profiles on various platforms were activated by court order, in many cases due to the large spread of attacks against democratic institutions, which are mainly against the right extreme.