Elon Musk Has Backed Himself Into a Corner in Brazil | EUROtoday

Less than two years after taking up Twitter, now X, Elon Musk has managed to lose the corporate entry to its third largest market and reportedly over 40 million customers. And regardless of his bravado on-line, he appears to have backed himself right into a nook.

Brazil’s determination to dam X is the fruits of an ongoing battle between Musk and the nation’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE)–a particular courtroom run by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes that issued take down orders on content material that it considers to be a menace to the integrity of its elections. Musk and X refused to conform, permitting accounts that have been accused of spreading hate speech and disinformation to stay on the platform, a transfer that finally triggered the ban.

Starlink was caught within the crosshairs too: The courtroom froze the belongings of Musk’s different firm, saying that it was a part of the identical “economic group” as X given its possession, for doable use to repay fines owed by X. When the block got here into impact Monday, Starlink allowed its clients—over 250,000 individuals, in line with the corporate— to bypass the X ban through the use of its satellite tv for pc web connection. After preliminary resistance, Starlink backed down and stated it might comply. Experts who spoke to WIRED say that more and more, it appears that evidently Musk has overplayed his hand.

“I think he is realizing Brazilians are not going to take to the streets because X is suspended,” says Nina Santos, a researcher on the Brazilian National Institute of Science & Technology for Digital Democracy. “Brazilian institutions are not going to back off just because Musk is cursing online.”

In response to a request for remark an X spokesperson directed WIRED to a publish from the platform’s Global Affairs staff. “To our users in Brazil and around the world, X remains committed to protecting your freedom of speech,” the publish reads partially.

Meanwhile, Musk has continued to antagonize the courtroom. Last week, he posted a seemingly AI-generated picture of Moraes behind bars (which was later deleted), with the accompanying textual content alleging, “One day, Alexandre, this picture of you in prison will be real,” and one other evaluating him to the Harry Potter villain Voldemort.

“Ever since April, he has been toying with the image of Moraes, the legitimacy of the Supreme Court and escalated in a problematic way,” alleges Bruna Santos, a researcher and activist with the civil society coalition Coalizão Direitos na Rede in Brazil. “He was fully aware and he knew what the consequences would be.”

WIRED reported how workers scrambled to keep away from a authorized disaster when Musk took over Twitter in 2022, simply days earlier than Brazil’s presidential runoffs. The firm was served a consent decree from the judiciary, warning it that if it didn’t hold its guarantees to maintain safeguards across the elections in place, it risked being blocked. At the time, the nation’s then-President, Jair Bolsonaro, and his supporters allegedly unfold disinformation concerning the safety of the nation’s elections to solid doubt on the outcomes. Musk had promised a rollback of the corporate’s present content material moderation insurance policies, and promised a kind of “free speech absolutism” that, in apply, has let hate speech and mis- and disinformation circulate freely on the platform.