Judge in Brazil orders Musk’s X to obey ban or face daily fine
Al JazeeraSEP 12 2024
Brazilian Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes on Thursday imposed a nearly $1M daily fine on two of Elon Musk's companies, social media platform X and satellite internet company Starlink, due to a brief reinstallment of X in the country.
X had been banned in Brazil by de Moraes over what he described as the spread of misinformation and hate speech, as well as the company's previous refusal to pay a $3M fine and appoint a legal representative in the country.
While de Moraes accused the company of a deliberate "trick," X cited "a change of network providers" as the reason for the "inadvertent and temporary service restoration to Brazilian users." The company switched its server from Starlink to Cloudflare.
If Musk wasn't a hypocrite, evidenced by his removal of content in some countries while allowing hate speech to flourish in others, de Moraes would have no ground to stand on. But since he is, it's understandable for a sovereign government to request the removal of certain content. When you add Starlink into the mix, which is directly tied to military operations, the government is also justified in not wanting a rogue billionaire doing whatever he wants within Brazilian territory.
While Musk may not be applying his free speech absolutism perfectly everywhere, he's doing more than anyone else in countries that are supposed to be Democratic. On the flip side, Judge de Moraes, a man whose tyranical history includes plotting to kidnap journalists, is pretending to defend Democracy as he burns its core tenets to the ground. Thankfully, de Moraes has no power over Starlink satellites, which will hopefully soon provide uncensored internet to all Brazilians.