Brazil’s Supreme Court has upheld a nationwide ban on X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk, who has been openly feuding with a judge over the proliferation of right-wing political misinformation on the website.
A Supreme Court panel decision on Monday affirmed a Friday ruling from Alexandre de Moraes, a Brazilian Supreme Court justice, to suspend X over concerns about disinformation and the company’s refusal to appoint a local legal representative as required by law. Moraes also said that users who circumvent the ban with a virtual private network, or VPN, could be fined 50,000 reais — or roughly $9,000 — a day.
Moraes has aggressively cracked down on online disinformation in the past few years in what he has described as a bid to protect Brazilian democracy. His suspension of X was the culmination of months of escalating tensions between him and Musk, who has used the platform to amplify right-wing grievances over “free speech” in Brazil and accuse Moraes of trying to suppress right-wing voices on X.
Last month, after Moraes threatened arrests over X’s refusal to comply with orders to suspend some accounts, Musk shuttered the company’s office in Brazil.








