The News
A Brazilian Supreme Court justice on Wednesday threatened to suspend X in the country if the social media platform’s owner Elon Musk failed to appoint a legal representative for the site within 24 hours.
It is the latest clash in a months-long legal war of words between Justice Alexandre de Moraes and Musk, who has accused the judge of attacking free speech on his platform.
“This ‘judge’ has repeatedly broken the laws he has sworn to uphold,” Musk wrote on X just hours before de Moraes issued the compliance order.
Earlier this year, de Moraes asked X to block certain accounts that were accused of spreading fake news and hate messages during former President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration. A series of legal disputes followed until Brazil’s ultimatum.
Brazilians had mixed reactions to the threat of X’s suspension, with topics such as “Twitter will end,“ “Elon Musk” and “Alexandre de Moraes” trending on X in the country on Thursday, Reuters reported. Many made light of the situation and posted memes about the public spat, but others, including some far-right users, echoed Musk’s concerns about censorship. De Moraes’ supporters, meanwhile, said the justice’s actions were lawful and supported by at least the majority of the court’s bench.
SIGNALS
Brazil’s ultimatum is a test for Musk
Musk faces a test as he decides to comply with Brazil’s request, The New York Times noted. The billionaire has attempted to mold the platform in line with his ideology of free speech absolutism, and his decision will prove “how far he is willing to take his stated commitment to protecting his social network from what he calls censorship,” the outlet noted. After months of legal wrangling between the court and X, Musk last month said he was removing the site’s remaining staff in Brazil after accusing de Moraes of threatening to arrest X’s legal representative; but the tone later changed, with the social network saying it was “dedicated to preserving our Brazilian office and operations” while preserving free speech, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Debate over ‘censorship’ on social media gathers steam
Musk’s insistence that X is a democratic marketplace for free speech is a fallacy because power on social media networks lies with the platform — and the algorithm — not the people, Bloomberg columnist Adrian Wooldridge argued. “Sensational tweets travel further and faster than sober ones. Polarizing figures attract more followers than judicious ones. The mechanisms available for debate — posting replies and correction — are weaker than the mechanisms for publicity,” he wrote. It’s not only Musk who is pushing back in the debate over content moderation — Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg accused the Biden administration this week of pressuring Facebook to “censor” content during the COVID-19 pandemic by asking it to remove misleading information, Axios noted.