Elon Musk announced on Saturday that the social media platform “X” will close its operations in Brazil “immediately” due to what he called “censorship orders” issued by Brazilian judge Alexandre de Moraes.
X alleges that Moraes secretly threatened one of its legal representatives in the South American country with arrest if it did not comply with legal orders to remove certain content from its platform. Brazil’s Supreme Court, where Moraes sits, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Billionaire Elon Musk’s platform said Saturday that its X service remains available to the Brazilian people.
Earlier this year, Moraes X ordered certain accounts to be blocked, while investigating so-called “digital militias” accused of spreading fake news and hate messages during the government of former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.
Moraes opened an investigation earlier this year into Musk after he said he would reactivate accounts on X that a judge had ordered banned. Musk called Moraes’s decisions on X “unconstitutional.”
After Musk’s challenges, X representatives backed down and told Brazil’s Supreme Court that the social media giant would comply with the legal rulings.
In April, lawyers representing X in Brazil told the Supreme Court that “operational errors” had allowed users who had been ordered blocked to remain active on the social media platform, after Moraes asked X to explain why it had not fully complied with his orders.
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