Less than two years after taking over Twitter, now X, Elon Musk has managed to deprive the company of its third-largest market and a reported 40 million-plus users. And despite his online bravado, he appears to have backed himself into a corner.
Brazil’s decision to block X is the culmination of an ongoing dispute between Musk and the country’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE), a special court headed by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes that has issued takedown orders for content it deems a threat to the integrity of elections. Musk and X refused to comply, allowing accounts accused of spreading hate speech and disinformation to remain on the platform, a move that ultimately led to the ban.
Starlink also came under scrutiny: The court froze the assets of Musk’s other company, on the grounds that it was part of the same “economic group” as X based on ownership, for possible use to pay off X’s fines. When the freeze went into effect on Monday, Starlink allowed its customers — more than 250,000 people, according to the company — to circumvent X’s ban by using its satellite internet connection. After initial resistance, Starlink relented and said it would comply. Experts who spoke to WIRED say it’s increasingly looking like Musk may have overplayed his hand.
“I think he realizes that Brazilians are not going to take to the streets because X is suspended,” said Nina Santos, a researcher at Brazil’s National Institute of Science & Technology for Digital Democracy. “Brazilian institutions are not going to back down because Musk swears online.”
In response to a request for comment, an X spokesperson referred WIRED to a message from the platform's Global Affairs team. “To our users in Brazil and around the world, X remains committed to protecting your freedom of expression,” the message reads in part.
Meanwhile, Musk continues to antagonize the court. Last week, he posted an apparently AI-generated image of Moraes behind bars (which was later deleted), with an accompanying caption claiming, “One day, Alexandre, this photo of you in prison will be real,” and another comparing him to Harry Potter villain Voldemort.
“Since April, he has been playing with Moraes’ image, the legitimacy of the Supreme Court, and escalating in a problematic way,” said Bruna Santos, a researcher and activist with the civil society coalition Coalizão Direitos na Rede in Brazil. “He was fully aware of it and he knew what the consequences would be.”
WIRED reported how employees scrambled to avert a legal crisis when Musk took over Twitter in 2022, just days before Brazil’s presidential election. The company was granted a consent order by the judiciary, warning that it risked being blocked if it failed to live up to its promises to maintain election security. At the time, the country’s then-president Jair Bolsonaro and his supporters were alleged to have spread disinformation about the security of the country’s election in order to sow doubt about the results. Musk had promised to roll back the company’s existing content moderation policies and pledge a kind of “free speech absolutism,” effectively allowing hate speech, misinformation and disinformation to flow freely onto the platform.
