Brazil's strict order for Elon Musk, X will be closed?
Brazil's strict order for Elon Musk, X will be closed…?
On Wednesday, Brazil's supreme court ordered billionaire Elon Musk to name a legal representative in brazil for his messaging platform X within 24 hours, otherwise the site would be suspended in the country. Earlier this month, X had announced that it would shut down X in Brazil. Musk called it a "censorship order" from Judge Alexander de Moraes. X had said that its service would remain available to Brazilian users. X had claimed that Moraes had secretly threatened to arrest a legal representative of the company. It was said that if the objectionable content was not removed from the platform immediately, he would be arrested.
What did the court say?
In Wednesday's order, Moraes said that under the country's Internet-related law, the activities of companies that do not respect Brazilian law or the privacy of personal information could be temporarily suspended. The supreme court posted a screenshot of Wednesday's court decision on its X account, tagging Musk and X's Global government Affairs accounts. Hours after the judge's ruling, Musk said on X that Moraes was "repeatedly breaking the laws he swore to uphold." Earlier this year, Moraes ordered X to block accounts that were involved in an investigation into so-called "digital militias" accused of spreading fake news and hate messages during the reign of former President Jair Bolsonaro. When Elon Musk challenged that decision and said he would reactivate the accounts the judge had ordered blocked, Moraes launched an investigation against the billionaire in early April.
Lawyers argued on behalf of X
X's representatives told the supreme court that social media platform X would comply with legal decisions. However, in April, Moraes asked X why it had allegedly not fully complied with his decisions. In response, lawyers representing X in brazil told the supreme court that the accounts it asked to be blocked could not be blocked due to operational flaws.