Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes issued a ruling on Friday ordering the country's telecom regulator to block access to the X social media platform nationwide within 24 hours.
This comes as Elon Musk missed a deadline to name a legal representative for X in the country after the closure of its local office in mid-August as de Moraes threatened arrests for not complying with his orders to remove certain X accounts.
High courts in Brazil have long censored and repressed anyone opposing the authoritarian leftist leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, ever since right-wing Jair Bolsonaro was in office. Blocking X is the latest attack — and certainly the most significant — against free speech in what once was a democratic country.