Elon Musk is wading into a war with Brazil over orders from the country’s Supreme Court to ban certain X accounts that helped spread election misinformation.
While the country deals with a debate about balancing free speech with significant threats to its democracy, Musk’s outsize voice — which is emboldening an antidemocratic wing of the far-right — isn’t helping, one civil liberties expert said.
Musk posted Saturday that he would oppose an order from Alexandre de Moraes, a top judge on the country’s Supreme Court, to ban an unknown number of X accounts related to Brazil’s far-right after an official X account initially said the company would comply.
In response, de Moraes said in a court decision that Musk would be investigated for obstruction, criminal organization, and incitement and called the X chairman’s weekend posts a “disinformation campaign,” the Associated Press reported. Musk will also face a fine of about $20,000 per banned account per day reinstated in Brazil, per the AP.
The judge’s actions are part of a wider initiative from the country to combat hate speech and false information, and de Moraes is at the forefront of this crusade.
De Moraes began an investigation in 2019 into what he called digital militias, or groups spreading disinformation online. In 2022, he briefly banned Telegram for facilitating the spread of false information and ordered tech companies like Meta to remove misinformation or face suspension in the country.
De Moraes’ work became more relevant after far-right rioters stormed the country’s congressional building on January 8, 2023, acting on false claims made by then-President Jair Bolsonaro that the election had been stolen.
De Moraes ordered an investigation into Bolsanaro’s role in the attempted coup that revealed coordinated social media efforts to undermine Brazil’s election systems — which also happens to be a violation of X’s own guidelines.
“Suspended accounts on X echoed these efforts and were related to Bolsonaro’s political base,” Veridiana Alimonti, Associate Director of Latin American Policy at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told BI.
Brazilian publication Estadão uncovered a few of these accounts ordered to be blocked on X. Names on the list included election misinformation influencers and at least one Nazi influencer.
Alimonti said Musk’s defense of these accounts was “backed by the Brazilian far-right” — including by Bolsonaro himself, who pushed baseless claims of widespread voter fraud in the country similar to those of former US President Donald Trump.
Musk has previously been cozy with Bolsonaro: The former president posted a video of himself praising Musk when the pair met in 2022 on Saturday after Musk’s tirade.
Musk ‘undermines’ a relevant debate
Alimonti said there are legitimate concerns about de Moraes’ actions.
De Moraes has been given extensive discretion about which online accounts to suspend in the name of national security. There is little transparency around his decisions, and while his actions have been crucial to maintaining democratic stability, he faces criticism for an overreach of power, Alimonti told BI in an email.
The country’s left argues that false information is eroding Brazilian democracy, pointing to the coup attempt as proof.
The right, including Bolsanaro, has painted De Moraes’ actions as draconian.
However, Alimonti said Musk’s voice isn’t helping foster nuanced debate.
“Musk’s claims in defense of free speech within this dispute undermines, rather than enhances, a qualified debate over ensuring user freedom of expression online and effectively balancing rights in content moderation,” Alimonti told BI.
Like in the US, freedom of expression is enshrined in Brazil’s constitution. However, the country’s protection of free speech is not absolute, giving the federal government greater discretion to ban certain types of speech — like hate speech.
Representatives for Musk and the Brazil Supreme Court did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
An inconsistent defense of free speech
The decision to fight Brazil’s government brazenly departs from Musk’s previous stance of complying with government limits to speech. The billionaire refused to speak out against China, India, and Turkey for restrictions on X.
Notably, Musk has had business dealings in these countries.
It highlights a pattern with Musk — the right to unhindered speech becomes a concern when those in his ideological or business circles are involved.
A recent example includes X supporting the lawsuits of two X users who were fired from their jobs due to posts made on the site. One of these lawsuits included a former employee of Jack Dorsey-founded company Block, who said they were fired for, among other things, posting anti-trans and ableist slurs on one of their pseudonymous accounts (perhaps unsurprising, considering Musk has shared his own transphobic views on Twitter).
However, Musk quickly combats speech critical of him and his companies. A recent ruling against the tech billionaire by federal Judge Charles Breyer said Musk’s company was using the courts to try to punish the Center for Countering Digital Hate for reporting that hate speech had gone up on X.
“If there is any question about the ‘punishing’ part, X Corp. filed a similar suit, not before this Court, in November of 2023 against Media Matters, another non-profit media watchdog, for ‘reporting on ads from major brands appearing next to neo-Nazi content,'” Breyer wrote in a footnote in the lawsuit.
And it’s this type of speech that Musk is going to bat for in Brazil — hateful and misinformed speech that can have serious implications for the country.
Brazil’s far-right is “trying to use Brazil as a laboratory on how to interfere in local politics and local businesses,” Nina Santos, a digital democracy researcher at the Brazilian National Institute of Science & Technology, told Wired. “They are making the case that their decision is more important than the national decision from a state democratic institution.”
