This is the strange case of of X’s ban in Brazil.
The country’s Supreme Court justice, one Alexandre de Moraes, ordered that access to X be blocked and that anyone caught trying to use it via a VPN could be fined about $9000 a day!
The spectacular fallout between X and the country (well, the Justice) follows months of the justice and Elon Musk going at each other over censorship. Musk claims that orders from the justice to remove certain accounts on X are attempts to stifle conversative views in Brazil. He makes similar claims about conservative voice censorship in the media in his own country, the USA.
The Brazilian justice for his part, argues that Elon Musk’s X is a cesspool of “disinformation, hate speech and attacks on the democratic rule of law, violating the free choice of the electorate, by keeping voters away from real and accurate information.” He also referred to Musk as an outlaw.
The situation deteriorated in recent weeks when Musk declared that X would not comply with Justice Moraes’s court orders to suspend accounts. The justice then threatened to arrest X employees. Elon responded by pulling X employees from Brazil and shutting down the Brazil office. Moraes then gave the order to block X and this past Saturday, users of the app found the app wasn’t working.
Ofcourse the natural solution would be to install a VPN to continue using it. But the justice knew Brazilians would do this, so he baked in the $9k a day fine threat into the order.
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