Brazil’s Ban on X Is a Taste of Things To Come

'[I]n blocking access to X, Brazil now joins an ignoble list of authoritarian nations, including China, Iran, Russia and North Korea, that have done the same.'

From Sp¡ked

By Fraser Myers

The global crackdown on free speech is getting more aggressive by the day.

X, the social-media giant owned by Elon Musk, has officially been banned in Brazil. Last night, X failed to meet a deadline set by a Supreme Court judge to block vast swathes of content and appoint a local legal representative for the company. It has now gone offline to its 22 million Brazilian users – roughly one tenth of the national population.

The Brazilian elites loathe X for precisely the same reason as the elites across the rest of the democratic world do – they blame it for the spread of so-called disinformation, particularly since it was taken over by Musk and its content-moderation policies were relaxed. Just as disinformation has been blamed for Brexit in the UK and Trump’s election in the US, it is blamed in Brazil for the 2018 election of right-wing firebrand Jair Bolsanaro – and especially for his supporters’ storming of the Brazilian congress in 2023 after he failed to win re-election (a kind of ‘January 6’ tribute act). Essentially, elites believe that fake news, by boosting populist movements, poses a direct challenge to their rule.

The censorship orders from judge Alexandre de Moraes, which X and Musk refused to comply with, make this all too clear. While Moraes claims he is merely trying to tackle disinformation, hate speech or what he calls ‘digital militias’ (those users promoting content that supposedly undermines democracy or the rule of law), his demands are nakedly political. As the New York Times reports, X was ordered to ban over 140 accounts, among them some of Brazil’s most prominent right-wing pundits and even elected members of congress. X has refused to comply as it says these takedown orders are themselves illegal and unconstitutional.

Tensions between Moraes and X erupted into the open back in April, when Musk publicly branded Moraes a ‘dictator’. But rows had been brewing behind the scenes, even before Musk took over what was then Twitter and rebranded it as a ‘free speech’ platform. As the Twitter Files reveal, between 2020 and 2022, Twitter’s legal counsel continually pushed back privately against requests for content to be removed and for data from anonymous users to be handed over to the state, noting that many of these requests were ‘illegal’, and not to mention ‘political’, in their blatant targeting of supporters of Bolsonaro.

Moraes’s moves against X are unprecedented in a democratic country. Banning or suspending an entire social-media platform is usually unheard of outside of despotic regimes. Indeed, in blocking access to X, Brazil now joins an ignoble list of authoritarian nations, including China, Iran, Russia and North Korea, that have done the same.

Worse still, the ban is far from the only measure Brazil has taken against X. Last week, Musk shut down the platform’s Brazilian offices, after his staff members were threatened with arrest. Indeed, one of Moraes’s key demands is for X to name a new legal representative who can be held accountable in Brazil for any breaches of the law. But if someone were to be named, they would very likely face immediate arrest.

Equally unprecedented is Brazil’s decision to levy fines on anyone in the country who tries to access X via a virtual-private network (VPN) – a tool that allows internet users to hide their location. Anyone caught tweeting from Brazil using a VPN could face daily fines of R$50,000 (roughly £6,700). This makes clear that the real target of government censors is not Big Tech companies or their billionaire owners like Musk or Mark Zuckerberg. No, it is the users of social media, ordinary citizens, whom the elites want to silence and control.

The banning of X in Brazil this week and the arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov in France last week suggest that the global war on free speech online has stepped up a gear. Where new laws like the UK’s Online Safety Act and the EU’s Digital Services Act threaten tech firms with heavy fines if they fail to bow down to government censorship, Brazil’s banning of X suggests we might start to see an even more aggressive approach to dissenting platforms in years to come. As long as the powers-that-be continue to believe that free speech poses an existential threat to their rule, then the methods for curtailing it will surely only get more blunt and more brutal.

Brazil is the canary in the coalmine.