Brazil: Supreme Court bans “X” following Musk’s refusal to comply with local laws

One of the world’s leading social networks, X, has been taken offline in Brazil—home to the fifth largest digital population—due to Elon Musk’s refusal to comply with local laws, resulting in the platform being blocked by the supreme court, news reports said.

On Saturday morning, millions of Brazilian users were unable to access X as internet providers and mobile phone companies began enforcing the ban.

Many Brazilians migrated to the competing platform, Bluesky, which reported an influx of 500,000 new users over the past two days.

The situation escalated on Thursday when Musk failed to meet a 24-hour deadline to appoint a new legal representative after X closed its local office in mid-August.

In a ruling on Friday, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who ordered the ban, accused X of operating as if it were “a lawless land” by enabling the widespread dissemination of misinformation, hate speech, and anti-democratic content.