A panel of Brazil’s Supreme Court unanimously upheld the decision on Monday. Reconsider a judge’s decision to block billionaire Elon Musk’s social media platform X across the countryAccording to the court’s website.
The broad support among judges undermines an effort by Musk and his supporters to portray Justice Alexandre de Moraes as an authoritarian rebel bent on censoring political speech in Brazil.
The panel voting in the virtual session included five of the 11 judges on the full bench, including de Moraes, who last Friday ordered the platform blocked for refusing to name a local legal representative, as required by law. It will remain suspended until it complies with their orders and pays the outstanding fine, which as of last week was more than $3 million, according to their decision.
The platform has clashed with de Moraes over his reluctance to block users, and has alleged that de Moraes wants a legal representative in the country so that Brazilian authorities can pressure the company by arresting someone.
De Moraes also set a daily fine of 50,000 reais ($8,900) for people or companies that use a virtual private network, or VPN, to access X. Some legal experts questioned the basis of that decision and how it would be enforced, including Brazil’s bar association, which said it would request the Supreme Court review that provision.
But a majority of the panel upheld the VPN fines – with one judge arguing it would be illegal unless it could be proven users were using X to commit a crime.
Brazil is one of the biggest markets for X, where it has hundreds of millions of users. Its block marked a dramatic escalation in a months-long dispute between Musk and de Moraes over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation.
Over the weekend, many X users in Brazil said they felt isolated from the world and had begun migrating en masse to alternative platforms such as BlueSky and Threads.
The suspension has set off a confrontation between de Moraes and Musk’s satellite internet provider Starlink, which is refusing to enforce the judge’s ruling.
“He repeatedly and grossly violated the Brazilian Constitution despite having sworn to defend it,” Musk wrote hours before the vote, launching a flurry of insults and accusations after the panel voted. On Sunday, Musk announced the creation of an X account to publish the judge’s sealed decisions, which he said would show he had violated Brazilian law.
But legal experts have said such claims are not true, especially considering that de Moraes’ colleagues have repeatedly backed his decisions — as they did on Monday. While his actions are considered legal by experts, they have sparked some debate over whether too much power has been given to one person, or whether there should be more transparency around his decisions.
Conrado Hubner, a constitutional law expert at the University of Sao Paulo, told The Associated Press that de Moraes’ decision to quickly send her order for panel approval helped garner “collective, more institutional support, which tends to depersonalize the decision.”
Huebner said it is standard for judges to refer such cases to a panel of five judges. In exceptional cases, judges can also send the case to the full bench for review. Had de Moraes done the latter, two judges who have questioned her rulings in the past — and who were appointed by former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro — would have had the opportunity to object or obstruct the vote’s progress.
X’s block forced de Moraes to freeze Starlink’s Brazilian financial assets last week to force it to cover X’s fine, as the two companies are part of the same economic group. The company says it has more than 250,000 customers in Brazil.
Legal experts have questioned the legal basis of the move, and Starlink’s law firm, Vieraño, told the AP it has appealed the stay. It declined to comment further.
In a defiance, Starlink informally told telecom regulator Anatel that it would not block X access unless its financial accounts were frozen, Anatel’s press office said in an email to the AP. Starlink did not respond to a request for comment.
“If I’m not mistaken, it was a WhatsApp message sent by Starlink’s legal representative to the president of Anatel, sending a message from the company in the United States,” Anatel board member Arthur Coimbra said on a video call from his office in Brasilia.
This communication does not hold legal value as conclusive evidence of non-compliance, but it prompted the telecom regulator to conduct the inspection on Monday.
Coimbra said Anatel would prepare the inspection report by the end of the day and then send it to the Supreme Court. He said the maximum punishment for a telecom company would be to revoke its license. If Starlink loses its license and continues to provide service, it would be a crime. He said Anatel could seize equipment from Starlink’s ground stations in Brazil that ensure the quality of its internet service.
Ground stations receive and transmit data between satellites and Earth. When a user accesses the Internet via satellite, the data request is sent to the satellite, which then forwards it to a ground station connected to the global Internet network.
That means it’s possible to shut down Starlink, though it would be difficult to enforce because the company’s satellites are not inside national territory, said Luca Belli, coordinator of the Center for Technology and Society at the Getulio Vargas Foundation. It’s popular in Brazil’s vast rural and forested areas.
Anatel President Carlos Bagori told local media GloboNews on Sunday afternoon that he had informed Justice de Moraes of Starlink’s decision.
Bailey, who is also a professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation’s law school, said “there is a high probability that some political tension will arise,” because Starlink is “clearly refusing to comply with orders and national laws.”
The arguments of Musk, a self-proclaimed “unfettered supporter of free-speech”, have been supported by Brazil’s political right, which views de Moraes’ actions as political persecution against Bolsonaro’s supporters.
On Brazil’s orders, X has previously shut down the accounts of lawmakers linked to Bolsonaro’s right-wing party and far-right activists accused of undermining Brazil’s democracy. In April, X’s lawyers sent a document to the Supreme Court saying it had suspended or blocked 226 users since 2019.
Bolsonaro and his allies have hailed Musk for defying de Moraes. Supporters rallied on Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana beach in April with a giant sign that read “Brazil thanks Elon Musk.”
Earlier that month, de Moraes had ordered an investigation into the spread of defamatory fake news against Musk and another into possible obstruction, incitement and criminal organization.
Bolsonaro is also the target of the de Moraes investigation, which asks whether the former president had any role in inciting a coup attempt to overturn the results of the 2022 election, which he lost.