Elon Musk shakes things up again with the announcement of X offices closure in Brazil. In a recent statement, the social platform revealed its decision to shut down its offices in Brazil following the demands of Judge Alexandre de Moraes from the Supreme Federal Court to block profiles on the platform.
Despite this setback, the social platform will remain accessible to users. Musk expressed, “Due to the ‘Justice’ demands of Alexandre De Moraes in Brazil forcing us to violate (secretly) Brazilian, Argentinean, American, and international laws, X has no choice but to cease our operations in Brazil.”
Last night, Judge Alexandre de Moraes threatened our legal representative in Brazil with arrest if we did not comply with his censorship orders. This was done through a secret order, which we are sharing to expose his actions. Despite our numerous appeals to the Supreme Court being ignored, the Brazilian public not being informed of these orders, and our Brazilian team having no responsibility or control over content blocks on our platform, Moraes chose to threaten our team in Brazil instead of respecting the law or due process. As a result, to protect the safety of our team, we have decided to close our operations in Brazil with immediate effect. The X service will still be available to the Brazilian population.
We are deeply saddened to have been forced to make this decision. The responsibility lies solely with Alexandre de Moraes. His actions are incompatible with a democratic government. The Brazilian people must make a choice: democracy or Alexandre de Moraes.
The platform also published the judge’s injunction setting a two-hour deadline to comply with the decision, along with imposing a daily fine of over eight thousand euros (50 thousand reais) for non-compliance. The clashes between Musk and de Moraes have been ongoing for months. The judge is considered one of the staunchest enemies of the former conservative president, Jair Bolsonaro. De Moraes has opened multiple investigations against the former head of state and is conducting inquiries into the spread of fake news.
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