Is Brazil’s shutdown of Elon Musk’s X a drastic but necessary move in the global fight against disinformation, or pure censorship?
Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes’s decision to block the social media platform formerly known as Twitter has reignited a debate about where to draw the line between upholding free expression and combatting hate speech.
The shutdown affected 22 million X users in Brazil, many of whom have begun migrating to smaller platforms such as Bluesky and Threads to avoid hefty fines for using Musk’s network.
Moraes blocked X in its biggest Latin American market after Musk refused to comply with orders to remove dozens of right-wing accounts and then failing to name a legal representative, as required under Brazilian law.
The showdown between the Brazilian and the US billionaire, who has been accused of turning X into a megaphone for right-wing conspiracy theories, comes amid growing scrutiny in …