Elon Musk announced Saturday that social media platform X will cease operations in Brazil “effective immediately.” The reason is said to be “illegal censorship” of content, among other things. At the same time, the company said, the platform service itself remains available to residents of Brazil.
“To protect the safety of our employees, we have decided to close our operations in Brazil with immediate effect,” the X platform itself said in a statement. It claims that judge Alexandre de Moraes threatened a company representative with arrest if she did not comply with orders to remove certain content from the platform.
At the same time, the company informed, the platform service itself remains available to residents. Brazil.
It is unclear exactly how the closure of operations in Brazil while maintaining access for customers in that country would work.
“The decision to close the X office in Brazil was difficult”
Elon Musk said in a post on X that “the decision to close the X office in Brazil was difficult, but if we had agreed to Alexandre de Moraes' (illegal) secret censorship and demand for private information, we would not have been able to explain our actions without feeling ashamed.”
Digital Militias
Earlier this year, Judge Moraes, who is investigating so-called digital militias accused of spreading fake news and hate under far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, ordered some accounts to be removed. Musk called Moraes’s decisions “unconstitutional.”
In the spring, lawyers representing platform X in Brazil told the court that “operational errors” had allowed users who were supposed to be blocked by the court to continue operating.
In posts Saturday, Musk also called the judge a “complete disgrace to the justice system.”
Main image source: Frederic Legrand – COMEO / Shutterstock