Elon Musk is feuding with Brazil’s powerful Supreme Court
The court has become the de facto regulator of social media in the country
Over the past two weeks Elon Musk, a serial entrepreneur, has been on a very public tirade against Alexandre de Moraes, one of the Brazilian Supreme Court’s 11 judges. The dispute is about X, a social-media company that Mr Musk owns. On April 6th X announced that a Brazilian court had ordered it to block an undisclosed set of “popular” accounts or face hefty fines. Instead, Mr Musk said he would lift restrictions on previously suspended Brazilian accounts, and threatened to close down X in Brazil. Mr Moraes then opened an inquiry into Mr Musk for obstruction of justice. That prompted Mr Musk to rail that censorship in Brazil is worse than in “any country in the world in which this platform operates”, and to call Mr Moraes a “dictator” who should be impeached and put “on trial for his crimes”.
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This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline “Elon v Brazil”
From the April 20th 2024 edition
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