Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk is warning that free speech across the world is in more danger than ever as an activist judge in Brazil has banned his social media platform X (formerly Twitter).
This is the first time in the Western hemisphere that a modern nation has entirely banned a worldwide social media platform. It’s down to one man, Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who seems to have amassed genuine dictatorial power in the South American country. He certainly looks the part, with a cleanly bald head, hard features, and a harsh stare, Moraes wears black judicial robes that look like a cross between a puritan witch-finder and the Star Wars character Darth Vader.
Moraes has been after X for some time; earlier he tried to force the company to ban users that he considered “far-right.” He is getting what he wants, as the whole Supreme Court backed him up on an order to shut down X entirely. Moraes not only banned the company, but is threatening fines of nearly $9,000 per day to ordinary citizens who continue to use the platform by circumventing digital shutoffs through the use of Virtual Private Networks (VPN). VPNs are services that allow users to route their personal internet traffic through a server in a distant location. This allows users to remain anonymous and to access sites that may be blocked officially in their countries.
Musk has openly defied the Brazilian court (though he shut down his Brazil offices and evacuated staff), deeming their censorship illegitimate. He has encouraged Brazilians to defy this legal order if they’re to have any chance of preserving free speech in their country. The billionaire is famous for owning SpaceX and Tesla, and for buying Twitter in 2022 to the consternation of Western liberals, who attack the site and accuse it of allowing “far-right misinformation.” He said the price he paid, $44 billion, was not the “price of Twitter,” but “the price of free speech.”
The Brazilian Supreme Court has been trying to axe Twitter for years. Since 2020, it has launched three criminal inquiries into the service. The court accuses Twitter of allowing “fake news” and misinformation, of allowing some kind of organized activity on the platform to mislead people, and of having something to do with an “attack” on the country’s congress in 2023 after former president Jair Bolsonaro was defeated.
