Late on Friday afternoon, Justice Alexandre de Moraes – who has been engaged in a dispute with X’s owner, Elon Musk, since April – ordered the “immediate, complete and total suspension of X’s operations” in the country, “until all court orders … are complied with, fines are duly paid, and a new legal representative for the company is appointed in the country”.
He gave Brazil’s National Telecommunications Agency 24 hours to enforce the decision. Once notified, the agency must pass the order on to the more than 20,000 broadband internet providers in the country, each of which must block X.
In an interview with the TV channel Globonews, the agency’s president, Carlos Manuel Baigorri, said the order had already been passed on to internet providers.
“Since we’re talking about more than 20,000 companies, each will have its own implementation time, but … we expect that probably over the weekend all companies will be able to implement the block,” he said.
Justice Moraes also summoned Apple and Google to “implement technological barriers to prevent the use of the X app by users of the iOS and Android systems” and to block the use of virtual private network (VPN) applications.
The decision imposes a daily fine of R$50,000 (£6,800) on individuals and companies that attempt to continue using X via VPN.
I’m kind of on the fence with this one.
As much as I dislike Twitter/X and it’s owner; their ‘crime’ is refusing to silence the political opponents of those currently in power, then further refusing to pay fines for that decision… Decisions, at least in principle, I agree with.
That said: I haven’t actually seen the content that’s at the center of this dispute; the posts of those political opponents. I’m also not very familiar with Brazils politics, so perhaps there’s context I’m missing.
Isn’t it natural: if you refuse to obey numerous court orders and pay your fines, you’ll get even worse court orders. This is not exactly the way to challenge the reasons for these other orders.