Brazilian high court to vote on X ban

Brazil’s five-member Supreme Court will vote on Monday on whether to uphold a ruling to ban social media platform X.

The decision comes after the Elon Musk-owned platform, previously known as Twitter, was suspended in the early hours of Saturday after it refused to appoint a legal representative in Brazil, with Musk claiming Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes was trying to enforce censorship.

Musk has also launched several attacks against Moraes, including posting an AI-generated image of the judge in a prison cell to his 196 million followers.

Chief Justice Luis Roberto Barroso said in an interview with Brazilian newspaper Folha de S.Paulo over the weekend that “a company that refuses to name a legal representative in Brazil cannot operate in Brazilian territory”.

Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who called for the vote, has been in a dispute with X’s owner Elon Musk over issues related with misinformation and hate speech on the platform.

The left-leaning Brazilian government had requested Twitter suspend access for seven influential accounts associated with the regime of former president Jair Bolsonaro.

Messaging platform Telegram was banned in the country last year for failing to meet similar demands.

Brazil Supreme Court is split into two chambers of five members each, excluding the chief justice. The chambers have right to vote on whether to uphold or reject rulings by any one of its judges. Moraes is a member of the first chamber that will be reviewing his decision to ban X.

Musk criticised the ban in recent post, stating: “Free speech is the bedrock of democracy and an unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is destroying it for political purposes.”

The feud has also led to the freezing of the Brazilian bank accounts of Starlink – the satellite internet providing subsidiary of Musk-led rocket company SpaceX.

Brazil currently represents one of X’s largest markets with the number of social media users in in Brazil forecasted to continuously increase between 2024 and 2029 by in total 45.5 million users.

Since X went offline on Saturday, X users have started migrating on other platforms, with social media platform BlueSky recording activity surging to one million users in the last three days,

“Brazil, you’re setting new all-time-highs for activity on Bluesky!,” said Bluesky in a post on the platform.