- The Brazilian Supreme Court has issued an order banning certain X accounts.
- Elon Musk said he would ignore the order and demanded that Brazil respect the principles of free speech.
- Brazil has been embroiled in a debate over free speech for years – Elon Musk’s voice doesn’t help.
Elon Musk is waging war with Brazil following orders from the country’s Supreme Court. exclude certain X accounts that helped spread misinformation about the elections.
As the country faces a debate over balancing free speech with significant threats to its democracy, Musk’s outsized voice — emboldening an antidemocratic wing of the far right — isn’t helping , said a civil liberties expert.
Musk announced Saturday that he would oppose an order from Alexandre de Moraes, one of the country’s top Supreme Court justices, to ban an unspecified number of X accounts linked to the Brazilian far right after an official X account initially stated that the company would comply.
In response, de Moraes said in a court ruling that Musk would be investigated for obstruction, criminal organization and incitement and called the X president’s posts over the weekend a “disinformation campaign,” he said. reported the Associated Press. Musk will also face a fine of approximately $20,000 per account banned per day reinstated in Brazil, according to the AP.
The judge’s actions are part of a broader effort by the country to combat hate speech and fake news, and de Moraes is at the forefront of that crusade.
De Moraes opened an investigation in 2019 in what he calls digital militias, or groups spreading disinformation online. In 2022, it briefly banned Telegram for facilitating the spread of misinformation and ordered tech companies like Meta to remove misinformation or face suspension. in the country.
De Moraes’ work became more relevant after far-right rioters stormed the country’s Congress building on January 8, 2023, acting on false claims by then-President Jair Bolsonaro, that the elections had been stolen.
De Moraes ordered an investigation into Bolsanaro’s role in the attempted coup that exposed coordinated social media efforts to undermine Brazil’s electoral system – also a violation of the law. X’s own guidelines.
“The suspended accounts on
Brazilian publication Estadão uncovered a few of these accounts that were ordered blocked on X. The names on the list included election disinformation influencers and at least one Nazi influencer.
Alimonti said Musk’s defense of these accounts was “supported by the Brazilian far right” – including by Bolsonaro himself, who has made baseless claims of widespread electoral fraud in the country, similar to those of the Former US President Donald Trump.
Musk has previously been cozy with Bolsonaro: the former president posted a video of himself praising Musk when the two men met in 2022 on Saturday after Musk’s tirade.
Musk “undermines” a relevant debate
Alimonti said there were legitimate concerns about de Moraes’ actions.
De Moraes has broad discretion over which online accounts to suspend in the name of national security. There is little transparency around his decisions, and although his actions have been crucial to maintaining democratic stability, he faces criticism for excessive power, Alimonti told BI in an email.
The country’s left says fake news is eroding Brazil’s democracy, citing the attempted coup as proof.
The right, including Bolsanaro, called De Moraes’ actions draconian.
However, Alimonti said Musk’s voice does little to foster nuanced debate.
“Musk’s free speech assertions in this dispute undermine, rather than strengthen, a nuanced debate about ensuring users’ free speech online and effectively balancing rights in moderation content,” Alimonti told BI.
As in the United States, freedom of expression is enshrined in the Brazilian constitution. However, the country’s protection of free speech is not absolute, giving the federal government greater latitude to ban certain types of speech, such as hate speech.
Representatives for Musk and Brazil’s Supreme Court did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
An inconsistent defense of freedom of expression
The decision to fight the Brazilian government is a clear departure from Musk’s previous stance of respecting the government’s limits on free speech. The billionaire refused to speak out against China, India and Turkey for the restrictions imposed on X.
Musk notably had business relations in these countries.
This highlights a trend in Musk: the right to free speech becomes a concern when his ideological or business circles are involved.
A recent example includes X supporting the lawsuits of two X users who were fired from their jobs due to posts made on the site. One of those lawsuits involved a former employee of the company Block, founded by Jack Dorsey, who said he was fired for, among other things, posting anti-trans and ableist slurs on one of their pseudonymous accounts ( which is perhaps not surprising, given that Musk shared his). transphobic opinions on Twitter).
However, Musk quickly combats critical speech towards him and his companies. A recent ruling against the tech billionaire by federal judge Charles Breyer said Musk’s company was using the courts to try to punish the Center for Countering Digital Hate for reporting that hate speech had increased on X.
“If there is any question about the ‘punishing’ part, X Corp. filed a similar complaint, not in this Court, in November 2023 against Media Matters, another nonprofit media watchdog, for having ‘reported on major brand advertisements appearing’ alongside neo-Nazi content,” Breyer wrote in a footnote to the lawsuit.
And this is the type of speech that Musk will defend in Brazil – hateful and misinformed speech that can have serious implications for the country.
Brazil’s far right is “trying to use Brazil as a laboratory for how to interfere in local politics and local businesses,” Nina Santos, a digital democracy researcher at Brazil’s National Institute of Justice, told Wired. science and technology. “They argue that their decision is more important than the national decision emanating from a democratic state institution.”
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