Brazil’s supreme court has ordered a nationwide suspension of Elon Musk’s social network X after the company vowed to defy earlier court orders. The court had given X 24 hours to appoint a legal representative in the country, but the deadline passed on Thursday evening.
The suspension comes as Brazil prepares for October municipal elections. Social media companies operating in the country are required by law to employ someone to handle government takedown notices, including those regarding political misinformation and incitements to violence. X has no such representative in Brazil and had threatened to remove all its employees from the country rather than face possible arrests over non-compliance with court orders.
Brazil has a population of more than 171 million active social media users, according to market research by Oosga. The suspension could cause business problems for Musk’s already embattled company, which acquired Twitter in late 2022 and implemented sweeping changes that led many major advertisers to flee or cut spending on ad campaigns.
The World Bank stopped paying for campaigns on X after a CBS News investigation found ads from the organization appeared under a racist post from an X account. Musk has repeatedly denounced court orders as censorship and compared the supreme court’s top judge, Alexandre de Moraes, to movie villain Voldemort.
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/30/brazil-orders-suspension-of-elon-musks-x.html