Elon Musk Has Backed Himself Into a Corner in Brazil

September 7, 2024:

Less than two years after taking over Twitter, now X, Elon Musk has managed to lose the company access to its third largest market and reportedly more than 40 million users. And despite his bravado online, he seems to have backed himself into a corner.

Brazil’s decision to block X is the culmination of an ongoing conflict between Musk and the country’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE), a special court run by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes that issued takedown orders on content it considers to be a threat to the integrity of its elections. Musk and X refused to comply, allowing accounts that were accused of spreading hate speech and disinformation to remain on the platform, a move that eventually triggered the ban.

Starlink was caught in the crosshairs too: The court froze the assets of Musk’s other company, saying it was part of the same “economic group” as X given its ownership, for possible use to pay off fines owed by X. When the block came into effect Monday, Starlink allowed its customers—more than 250,000 people, according to the company— to circumvent the X ban by using its satellite internet connection. After initial resistance, Starlink backed down and said it would comply. Experts who spoke to WIRED say that increasingly, it seems that 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 at 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 comment, an X spokesperson directed WIRED to a post from the platform’s Global Affairs team. “To our users in Brazil and around the world, X remains committed to protecting your freedom of speech,” the post reads in part.

Meanwhile, Musk has continued to antagonize the court. Last week, he posted a seemingly AI-generated image of Moraes behind bars (which was later deleted), with the accompanying text alleging, “One day, Alexandre, this picture of you in prison will be real,” and another comparing 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 employees scrambled to avoid a legal crisis when Musk took over Twitter in 2022, just days before Brazil’s presidential runoffs. The company was served a consent decree from the judiciary, warning that if it didn’t keep its promises to keep safeguards around the elections in place, it risked being blocked. At the time, the country’s then president, Jair Bolsonaro, and his supporters allegedly spread disinformation about the security of the country’s elections to cast doubt on the results. Musk had promised a rollback of the company’s existing content moderation policies, and promised a sort of “free speech absolutism” that, in practice, has let hate speech and mis- and disinformation flow freely on the platform.

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