Why is Brazil's supreme court shutting down social media platform X? | DW News

Judge orders ban of social media platform X in Brazil out of Brazil where a Supreme Court Judge has ordered the social media platform X to be shut down in the country that's after the com the company again flouted an order that he'd issued X's owner billionaire businessman Elon Musk has become embroiled in a public dispute with Brazilian Supreme Court Judge Alexander demores who ordered X to deactivate several accounts now Justice Morris says he's tackling political disinformation and attacks on his country's democracy Elon Musk said the judge was censoring right-wing voices and refused to comply Brazil's leftwing president Luis inao Lula de Silva has also weighed in declaring that musk is not above the law every single person who has investments in Brazil no matter where they're from in the world they're subject to the Brazilian Constitution and Brazilian laws having a lot of money doesn't allow anyone to disrespect that this man has to accept the laws of this country and if the Supreme Court makes a decision he has to comply it's true for me it's true for him Fabio de Silva is a professor of Fabio de Sa e Silva, University of Oklahoma Brazilian studies at the University of Oklahoma in the US he joins us tonight from the Brazilian Capital Brazilia where he's currently doing research uh welcome to DW Professor um what does Justice mores think X has been doing Bill thanks thanks for having me first of all uh so Justice Mor thinks and and he's correctly in in thinking uh uh that way that X is basically refusing to accept Brazilian laws and to comply with Brazilian judicial orders there are some uh investigations going on in Brazil on individuals who used social media to violate Brazilian law electoral law as well as criminal law uh some of those investigations are are being uh presided over by by Justice Mo and in the course of those investigations there have been some orders for uh Twitter or X to you know bring down some of those profiles and so on and in the beginning uh X would comply with those orders as just like other social media platforms but after Mr musk bought the platform he made it very clear that he did not accept those orders and that he thinks they amount to censorship before uh justice mores uh followed through with his threat X announced on X that it would not comply with the Court's instruction here's some of what appeared on the the company's Global Affairs account today soon we expect Judge Alexander demores will order X to be shut down in Brazil simply because we would not comply with his illegal orders to censor his political opponents now these enemies include a duly elected senator a 16-year-old girl amongst others so Professor what is Elon Musk referring to there his referring F to some of those investigations that I mentioned so in this case there was a senator who was using his his account to for instance uh incite the military against the civilian government in the other case that he mentioned a profile of a young girl was used apparently by her father to dox a police officer who was working in one of those investigations and so it was in that context that Justice Mo ordered the platform to bring those profiles down but Mr musk as I mentioned is is refusing to do that and he's claiming that this is censorship which I do not agree with because as I mentioned these are these decisions are being T adopted in the context of Investigations uh that look into violation of Brazilian laws it's an odd decision anyway because censorship or not you would think that working within a a particular jurisdiction you just follow the law so is there something more going on there why does Elon Musk uh think that it's it's okay to disregard the laws in Brazil where he wouldn't do that in in in the United States or or even the the European Union I believe uh Phil that uh uh not only Mr musk but others around the world look at Brazil nowadays as a potential you know case in which a stronger push to regulate social media has has been uh attempted uh so far not successfully but you know not not only through the actions of Justice Mor but also through uh Congress that was deliberating over a bill uh last year there have been attempts to you know Place some limits onto what social media platforms can do and what kinds of obligations they should have to for instance uh moderate content and avoid that misinformation as well as hate speech be disseminated on their their platforms I also think uh in the case of Mr musk there is a commercial interest because uh apparently his his business wasn't doing well in Brazil so he was already trying or planning to moving that away from the country um and there seems to be also some kind of Po you know um sympathy on the part of Mr musk for the Brazilian far R it's interesting you say that it it's not doing well commercially in Brazil I saw an estimate today that something like 40 million Brazilians roughly a fifth of the population access X at least once a month which sounds like a massive market for Elon Musk now to sacrifice in this way it is it is a a you know reasonable or sizable market for any social media platform which is a reason why many people doubt that musk would take things as far as he did um the information that we uh listen to here is that the uh you know the the branch here wasn't doing well commercially in terms of the ads that they are able to sell for example right but yes you're right that the platform is widely used in Brazil uh like I think it happens elsewhere as well is a platform that that's a kind of Niche platform so it's it's very much used by journalists or by some you know U internet businesses or by some academics to to engage in exchanges of ideas um but but yeah it's it's it's a decent number and uh I think Brazilians are going to to miss X if it's really banned in the next couple days and so tell us about the the judge at the center of this casee Supreme Court Justice Alexander demores who is he he is actually uh you know relatively conservative Uh u lawyer he was a prosecutor in the state of s Paulo uh before entering politics I think he brings some of that uh knack for investigation from his uh origins in the public Prosecutor's career he got to the Supreme Court during the uh term of President Tamer who replaced President dma Rusev after she was impeached and uh you know he's always been seen actually as uh a very conservative judge very very uh uh tough tough on crime uh judge or or legal scholar even which he also is uh but it's in that makes things very interesting because nowadays the Brazilian far right suggests that he's working in line with the president when they actually come from very different camps politically good talking to you Professor thanks for talking us through that Brazil expert Professor Fabio daa Silva from the University of Oklahoma thank you so much thank you so David Nemer, University of Virginia much David Neymar is an associate professor in the department of media studies and the interim director at the Latin American studies program at the University of Virginia he joins us now from Charlottesville David thank you so much for being here why is Brazil's Supreme Court shutting down access to the social media platform X well basically uh Elon Musk has refused to comply with the local laws um in a nutshell uh supreme justice alexand de Mor has been overseen and investigation about um disinformation campaigns that took place during the 2022 presidential elections and Twitter or X was one of the main platforms where these misinform were spread and Jus as Moray has asked um the content to be taken down however uh musk and X have been not complying with the court orders so um Justice Moray has sent a couple of fines for morise and X they have refused to pay them um musk has shut down the office and now because there's no way for the Supreme Court to communicate with x's office now it came down to um the suspension of access to X in Brazil just remind us of the background of this case Justice morise wanted X to block certain accounts what was the problem with these accounts under Brazil's laws well these accounts were violating uh electoral laws uh Brazil has very specific laws when it comes to electoral period uh when you know parties are uh executing their campaigns certain contents are not allowed to be spread on social media or any other forums Brazil has very specific laws as well about the internet um so anytime some a post violates the laws then the courts can demand the platforms to take them down if the platforms uh refuse to do so they can be also liable for the for that content so they can also be prosecuted if they don't comply with the takedown notice so what will Elon Musk have to do now to get X back in Brazil well uh he's got some very expensive fines to pay he does need a legal representative in the country uh to comply with some of the court orders um he has been doubling down in the sense that he does not want to go back um and also Justice mise also has doubled down saying that he's going to go after him he has frozen a couple of bank accounts that belongs to start links and start link belongs also to ilas so neither of them is willing to stop so it we see how this messy field ends up well that's David neyar with the University of Virginia thank you so much