Elon Musk has less than 24 hours to act before 217 million people lose access to X indefinitely

The Brazil-X drama that we told you about last week just keeps on getting worse. Now, the Brazilian judge Alexandre de Moraes is threatening to suspend X in the whole of Brazil, a country of 217 million population.

That's unless the X boss Elon Musk acts swiftly and appoints a legal representative for X in Brazil until Thursday night – which is today. Which means there are less than 24 hours to act, if judge Moraes is serious about it.

It all started with X claims that Moraes secretly threatened one of the company’s legal representatives in Brazil with arrest if the platform did not comply with orders to remove specific content.

The social media company also shared images of a document, allegedly signed by Moraes, stating that a daily fine of 20,000 reais (about $3,650) and an arrest warrant would be issued against X's representative Rachel Nova Conceição if the platform failed to fully comply with the judge's orders.

Then X announced that in order to protect their employees, they've decided to shut down the X operations in Brazil, "effective immediately".

Despite the office closure, X assured users in Brazil that the service would still be available – but that was last week.

Earlier this year, Moraes ordered X to block certain accounts as part of an investigation into "digital militias" accused of disseminating false information and hate speech during former President Bolsonaro’s term.

Additionally, Moraes launched an investigation into Musk earlier this year after the billionaire expressed plans to reactivate accounts on X that the judge had ordered to be blocked. Musk has criticized Moraes' decisions about X, describing them as "unconstitutional".

In April, X’s lawyers in Brazil explained to the Supreme Court that "operational errors" had allowed some users who were supposed to be blocked to remain active on the platform, following Moraes' demand for clarification.

Last week, Musk took to X to call Moraes "an utter disgrace to justice" and claimed that the company could not comply with the judge’s "secret censorship and private information handover demands".

Now, Elon Musk is quoting articles about the judge's latest action, which describe them as "atypical and illegal":


It's been a rollercoaster in regard to social media these last few weeks. Apart from the Brazil-X drama, the Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in France, and Mark Zuckerberg admitted that the Biden-Harris administration had forced him to suppress COVID-19 content on Facebook and Instagram, as well as the Hunter Biden laptop story.

But the West is a free world, right? Right?