Reuters: X blocked in Brazil
Kyiv • UNN
Brazilian regulator suspends access to X due to Musk's conflict with a Supreme Court judge. X did not appoint a legal representative in Brazil, which led to the blocking of the platform and the possible loss of an important market.
Brazil's telecommunications regulator on Friday announced the suspension of access to Elon Musk's social network X in response to a court ruling related to a months-long conflict between Musk and Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. Reuters writes about it, reports UNN.
Details
Social network X missed a Thursday night deadline to appoint its legal representative in Brazil, causing the platform to be blocked. Musk said that the judge was trying to impose unreasonable censorship, while Moraes insisted that hate speech on social media should be regulated.
“They are shutting down the main source of truth in Brazil,” Musk wrote in X on Friday.
The court's decision could lead to X losing one of its largest and most important markets amid Musk's difficulties in generating advertising revenue on the platform. As of late Friday evening, X remained available in Brazil, although some users reported blocked access to the platform. The country's three largest telecommunications operators announced that they would start blocking access from midnight (0300 GMT on Saturday), according to local news portal UOL.
The conflict has also led to the blocking of bank accounts of Starlink, a satellite Internet provider in Brazil, which is a division of SpaceX under the leadership of Musk. Judge Moraes ruled that X, formerly Twitter, will be suspended in Brazil until all related court orders are fulfilled, including the payment of fines of more than $3 million and the appointment of a local representative, as required by Brazilian law.
Moraes also instructed telecommunications regulator Anatel to implement the blocking decision. The agency told Reuters that it was working on implementing the decision, but did not specify a time frame.
To effectively block X in Brazil, telecommunications companies must stop transmitting network traffic and also prevent users from accessing the platform through virtual private networks (VPNs). Moraes ruled that those who continue to access X through VPNs will be fined up to 50,000 reais ($9,000) per day.
Initially, tech giants Apple and Google were instructed to remove X from their app stores and implement so-called anti-VPN measures that would make it more difficult to use the X app on devices running iOS and Android operating systems. However, Moraes later reversed this part of the decision, noting that this would not be necessary.
