Elon Musk on Saturday announced that effective immediately, X will be shuttering operations in Brazil due to what it called "censorship orders" from Brazilian judge Alexandre de Moraes (aka 'Darth Vader').
According to the company, Moraes secretly threatened an X layer if he did not comply with legal orders to remove content from the platform.
"Last night, Alexandre de Moraes threatened our legal representative in Brazil with arrest if we do not comply with his censorship orders. He did so in a secret order, which we share here to expose his actions," reads a Saturday post from X's Global Government Affairs account. "Despite our numerous appeals to the Supreme Court not being heard, the Brazilian public not being informed about these orders and our Brazilian staff having no responsibility or control over whether content is blocked on our platform, Moraes has chosen to threaten our staff in Brazil rather than respect the law or due process."
"As a result, to protect the safety of our staff, we have made the decision to close our operation in Brazil, effective immediately."
Musk replied to the post, saying "Due to demands by “Justice” @Alexandre in Brazil that would require us to break (in secret) Brazilian, Argentinian, American and international law, � has no choice but to close our local operations in Brazil.
"He is an utter disgrace to Justice," Musk continued.
According to Musk, X remains available to the people of Brazil.
Earlier this year, Moraes ordered X to block certain accounts while he investigated so-called "digital militias" accused of spreading fake news. Moraes also opened an inquiry into Musk after he said he would reactivate X accounts that the judge had ordered blocked.
Musk has called Moraes' orders "unconstitutional," and called Moraes himself "Brazil's Darth Vader."
In an April post to X, Musk said that Moraes had "brazenly and repeatedly betrayed the constitution and people of Brazil," and should "resign or be impeached."
De Moraes said that as part of his decision to open an inquiry, that "X shall refrain from disobeying any court order already issued, including performing any profile reactivation that has been blocked by this Supreme Court," Reuters reported at the time.
The justice said that Musk would face a fine that equates to approximately $20,000 each time an account is reactivated on X.
For an overview:
The TWITTER FILES BRAZIL, reported by investigative journalist Michael Shellenberger, and colleagues David Ágape and Eli Vieira, reveal that "Brazil is engaged in a sweeping crackdown on free speech led by a Supreme Court justice."
Sitting members of Brazil’s Congress and journalists were among those named by Brazil’s highest court for censoring, Mr. Shellenberger said of his findings, which he has shared on X.
He named lower house members Carla Zambelli of former President Jair Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party and Marcel van Hattem of the NOVO party as targets of orders targeting posts the court deemed misinformation.
According to the internal files Mr. Shellenberger shared, Twitter in Brazil was threatened with a $30,000 fine. The company had one hour to remove the Congress members’ posts or pay the court for noncompliance.
The article reports that the justice had even been jailing individuals without trial for things posted on social media.
According to Mr. Shellenberger, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes allegedly made demands to Twitter to allow access to its internal data, in violation of Twitter’s own policies on the handling of user data. -Epoch Times
The "Twitter Files" also show that the justice “sought to weaponize Twitter’s content moderation policies against supporters of then-president @jairbolsonaro,” Mr. Shellenberger said—a similar trend to what the “Twitter files” revealed was happening to former President Donald Trump and conservative voices in the United States.
The origin of the order to censor Brazilians’ posts was also revealed in the internal Twitter files, Mr. Shellenberger said.
Brazilian Attorney General Jorge Messias backed de Moraes, saying in a post on X: "We cannot live in a society in which billionaires domiciled abroad have control of social networks and put themselves in a position to violate the rule of law, failing to comply with court orders and threatening our authorities."
As Shellenberger notes in response to today's action:
Global elites have made clear that they believe that freedom of speech on a single social media platform, and one that is far smaller than Facebook or Google, is intolerable. This desire for total control is the central characteristic of the totalitarianism that is presently emerging from elites at the corporate and political levels around the world.
In addition to pushing censorship, these leaders and global elites are seeking to overturn liberal democracies and impose a radically different system of iliberal rule in the Western world. Rather than meritocracy and equal justice for all, elites are seeking to impose a Woke racialist hierarchy that gives preferential treatment to some groups and prejudicial treatment to other groups supposedly based on historic oppression.