Elon Musk-owned microblogging platform X has announced that it is shutting down its office in Brazil. Elon Musk announced this decision in a post on X and said that it was a tough decision, but if the company followed Brazil's (illegal) secret censorship and private information handover demands, there was no way X could have explained its actions without being ashamed.
X users were praising Musk for his commitment to ensuring free speech on the platform. They hailed him for not caring about business but for staying true to the cause.
Musk tweeted, "The decision to close the X office in Brazil was difficult, but, if we had agreed to @alexandre’s (illegal) secret censorship and private information handover demands, there was no way we could explain our actions without being ashamed."
What Went Down
Earlier this year, Alexandre de Moraes ordered X to block certain accounts as part of his investigation into "digital militias" accused of spreading fake news and hate speech during the tenure of far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro.
Moraes also launched an inquiry into Musk after the billionaire expressed intentions to reactivate accounts on X that the judge had ordered blocked. Musk has criticized Moraes' decisions regarding X as "unconstitutional." Following Musk's objections, X representatives reversed their stance and informed Brazil's Supreme Court that the platform would adhere to the legal rulings.
In April, lawyers representing X in Brazil told the Supreme Court that "operational faults" had allowed users who were supposed to be blocked to remain active on the platform. This statement came after Moraes requested an explanation from X on why it had not fully complied with his orders.
However, recently, X claimed that Moraes secretly threatened one of the legal representatives with arrest if the company refused to comply with the legal take down orders. It seems that X took a solid stand of shutting down the business in Brazil after this incident only.