X goes offline in Brazil following Supreme Court order; millions seek alternatives
PTC News Desk: On Sunday, X, one of the world's leading social networking platforms, became inaccessible to users in Brazil after failing to comply with local legal requirements. The ban follows a Supreme Court order issued on Friday, which directed the suspension of X—formerly known as Twitter—due to Elon Musk's failure to appoint a new legal representative in an ongoing case.
By Saturday morning, millions of Brazilian users found themselves unable to log into X, with messages such as “Seems like you lost connectivity. We’ll keep retrying,” appearing on their screens, according to The Guardian. Internet providers and mobile companies in Brazil began implementing the court's order immediately, effectively cutting off access to the platform.
In response to the outage, many Brazilians have flocked to alternative social networks, such as Bluesky, which reported a surge of 500,000 new users in just two days. Notable among the new members is Felipe Neto, a leading Brazilian social media influencer with over 17 million followers on X. Neto remarked on Saturday, “Don’t forget, when you go to another country, you’re obliged to follow its legislation, even if you disagree with it.”
X had approximately 22 million users in Brazil before the ban. The suspension came after a protracted legal struggle between Brazil's judiciary and the tech billionaire Elon Musk.
The legal battle intensified when Alexandre de Moraes, one of Brazil’s top judges, pushed for X to remove anti-democratic, far-right content. This effort was part of a broader initiative following the January 2023 uprising in Brasilia, where supporters of former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro stormed the capital.
Musk, known for his alignment with rightwing figures such as Bolsonaro and his U.S. ally Donald Trump, resisted Moraes's demands. He accused the judge of censoring free speech and suppressing conservative viewpoints.
The final blow came when Musk failed to meet a 24-hour deadline to appoint a new legal representative after X closed its local office in mid-August. In the ruling issued on Friday, Moraes criticised X for treating the platform as a “no man’s land” that facilitated the “massive propagation” of misinformation, hate speech, and anti-democratic rhetoric.
As of midnight, Brazilian users noticed their inability to access X. Musk responded to the court's decision with intensified criticism of Moraes, referring to him disparagingly as “Voldemort” and accusing him of being a “dictator and a fraud.” However, with the platform offline, Brazilian users could no longer view Musk's posts without using a virtual private network (VPN).
- With inputs from agencies
