It’s Elon Musk vs what can be said online. The ultimate test for free speech. Brazil joins China, Russia, Iran & North Korea as authoritarian governments censoring the old twitter app.
Brazil has just demanded that X be taken down within 24 hours while App stores have 5 days to comply. Citizens of Brazil will be fined $8,874 in daily fines for even using a VPN to access X.
This is the ultimate test for free speech yet, and Elon Musk is standing on business. "Alexandre de Moraes, a Brazilian Supreme Court justice, ordered internet providers to block access to X across the nation of 200 million because the company lacked a necessary legal representative in Brazil." We have seen this happen just last year in Brazil with other social media platforms, like Rumble - a free speech video platform. What message is the Brazil regime trying to send to it's citizens? Better yet, what is their motive for doing this? From the outside looking in, doesn't seem like it's for the betterment of the country and it's citizens.
So Elon Musk decided to close X's office in Brazil.
"X said that it viewed Justice Moraes’ orders as illegal and that it planned to break their legal seal and publish them." “Free speech is the bedrock of democracy and an unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is destroying it for political purposes,” Mr. Musk said on Friday.
The Brazilian judge also froze the finances of another Musk business in Brazil, SpaceX's Starlink satellite-internet service, in an attempt to collect "$3 million in fines levied against X."
Starlink has more than 250,000 customers in Brazil so Elon said he would make the service free if necessary, just to prove a point.
Justice Moraes and Musk have been battling for months: Musk claiming the Judge is "illegally censoring conservative voices. But Justice Moraes says Mr. Musk is illegally obstructing his work to clean up the Brazilian internet."
"Since 2022, Brazil ranks fourth globally with more than 25 million downloads of the X app" according to Appfigures.
The U.S. Embassy in Brazil said “The United States values freedom of speech as a cornerstone of a healthy democracy,” Yet around the world, several governments have banned X, including China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. "Some other nations have temporarily blocked the site at times. In 2021, Nigeria suspended the service for about seven months." (NYT)
“The people of Brazil have a choice to make — democracy, or Alexandre de Moraes,”
Elon Musk released a multitude of tweets showing his passion to any government that tries to control citizens free speech and access to information:
Let your voice be heard in the comment section below.
Go Elon!