Social media giant X, formerly known as Twitter, recently declared that it will be discontinuing its activities in Brazil “with immediate effect,” citing “censorship orders” from Brazilian judge Alexandre de Moraes as justification. But according to X, the platform’s services will still be accessible in Brazil.
The social media behemoth released images of a purportedly signed letter by Moraes that threatened to impose an arrest decree and a daily fine of 20,000 reais ($3,653) on X representative Rachel Nova Conceicao should the platform fail to properly abide by his directives.
“To protect the safety of our staff, we have made the decision to close our operation in Brazil, effective immediately,” said X. Brazil’s population can still access the X service, the platform stated.
Elon Musk’s business X alleges that Moraes threatened to jail one of the firm’s Brazilian legal advisers in secret if the company disobeyed court orders to remove certain content from its platform.
The Supreme Court of Brazil, which Moraes sits on, said Reuters that it would not comment on the issue or confirm or reject the veracity of the document that X shared.
While he looks into alleged “digital militias” that are accused of disseminating hate speech and fake news during the administration of far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro, Moraes ordered X to block specific accounts earlier this year.
Earlier this year, after Musk declared he would revive X accounts that the judge had ordered be blocked, Moraes launched an investigation against the billionaire. The Moraes’ choices about X have been referred to by Musk as “unconstitutional.
Following Musk’s challenges, X executives changed their minds and informed the Supreme Court of Brazil that the massive social media company will abide by the court’s decisions.
Attorneys for X in Brazil testified before the Supreme Court in April that “operational faults” had let users to continue using the social networking site after they were ordered to be blocked. This was in response to Moraes’ request for an explanation of X’s claimed failure to properly comply with his rulings.
In tweets on X on Saturday, Musk referred to Moraes as a “complete disgrace to justice” and stated that the business was unable to comply with the judge’s requests for “secret censorship and private information handover.”
