The Washington Post editorial board has criticized Brazil’s government for its decision to ban X.
“The billionaire CEO, Musk, is right when he claims that a Brazilian judge’s decision to prohibit X from operating in Brazil is an attack on internet speech worldwide,” The Post wrote, in an editorial with the headline, “In this fight for free speech, Musk’s X marked the correct position.”
A Brazilian judge ordered that the social media platform be “immediately and completely suspended” until it pays all fines and complies with court orders. Starlink, another Musk-led firm, is also fighting to survive in Brazil. A Brazilian Supreme Court Justice ordered Starlink’s Brazilian financial accounts to be frozen.
The Post reported that the actions of Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes to shut down X have “come at a substantial cost for free expression,” with mandates to remove and even arrest warrants issued often under seal, and without much reasoning to back them up.
The newspaper noted that “the recent action against X was both more of the same thing and more: After X refused to comply with the court’s order to block over 140 accounts, he warned he would jail its Brazilian legal representative.”
Musk’s team then left Brazil, allowing the situation in Brazil to worsen. This lack of physical presence led Moraes, who was then able to block X for 220 million Brazilians, to issue an order. He said that if anyone tried to circumvent this restriction, they could be fined almost $9,000 a single day.
The paper stated that “if this sounds authoritarian it is.” “Whatever threat the accounts that Mr. Moraes wanted to be removed might have posed to democracy, the threat posed by one government official restricting the speech of two hundred million people is greater.”
The Post reported, “Taken together with Mr. Moraes’s choice to block the assets of Starlink, an internet provider of Mr. Musk’s separate company, this move aligns Brazil with countries like China and Russia, not the free world.”
Musk’s defense comes after the Post has regularly criticized the billionaire. The Post repeatedly attacked Musk when he tried to buy Twitter in 2022.
A Post reporter said just last month that the Biden White House would be better off removing “misinformation”, from an interview Musk planned to have with former President Trump.
