The Brazilian supreme court has cut off access to X in the country after Elon Musk reportedly refused to comply with orders to remove certain accounts they deemed harmful to its democracy.
Judge Alexandre de Moraes had requested that Musk get rid of accounts espousing hate speech and far-right opinions following an uprising in Brazil’s capital city Brasília in January 2023, in which supporters for the former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro mobbed government buildings.
Moraes had given Musk a deadline to appoint a legal representative for X in Brazil, threatening the ban. When that deadline passed, he followed through on cutting off access to the app, which has about 40 million users in the country.
Those who access X using a VPN will be penalized with a daily fine of R$50,000 ($8,900 USD). The judge also ordered that app stores remove X in the country, effective immediately.
