Owner of X Corp. Elon Musk said on the platform on April 6 that the company had decided to lift all restrictions on Brazilian accounts targeted by an order from the nation’s Supreme Court.
“We are lifting all restrictions. This judge has applied massive fines, threatened to arrest our employees and cut off access to X in Brazil. As a result, we will probably lose all revenue in Brazil and have to shut down our office there. But principles matter more than profit,” Mr. Musk wrote, explaining X’s decision.
The announcement came in response to reporting by investigative journalist Michael Shellenberger and colleagues David Ágape and Eli Vieira, titled “Twitter Files Brazil.”
In his reporting, Mr. Shellenberger cited records released by X, formerly known as Twitter, during Mr. Musk’s 2022 takeover that allegedly show that “Brazil is engaged in a sweeping crackdown on free speech led by a Supreme Court justice.”
He named lower house members Carla Zambelli of former President Jair Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party and Marcel van Hattem of the NOVO party as targets of orders targeting posts that the court deemed misinformation.
According to the internal files that Mr. Shellenberger shared, Twitter in Brazil was threatened with a $30,000 fine. The company had one hour to remove the congressmembers’ posts or pay the court for noncompliance.
The article reports that the justice had even been jailing individuals without trial for their social media posts.
The origin of the order to censor Brazilians’ posts was also revealed in the internal Twitter files, he said.
He said Justice de Moraes, Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court, and Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court declined to respond to the report.
Last year, Justice de Moraes also ordered an investigation into executives at social messaging platform Telegram and Alphabet’s Google, who were in charge of a campaign criticizing a proposed internet regulation bill.
The bill put the onus on internet companies, search engines, and social messaging services to find and report illegal material instead of leaving it to the courts and charged hefty fines for failures to do so.
‘Aggressive Censorship’
Mr. Musk said of Brazil’s Twitter Files, which he released to Mr. Shellenberger, “This aggressive censorship appears to violate the law & will of the people of Brazil.”He had replied to an earlier post urging X to not comply with the court order, saying the independent platforms Rumble and Locals did not comply.
“You’re powerful enough to make a difference,” Mr. Figueiredo said.
Mr. Musk describes himself as a free-speech absolutist. He said at the time when he bought Twitter that it was to create a platform on which “a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner.”
