Elon Musk’s X closes its operations in Brazil, but continues to operate in the country, According to posts on Saturday from the social media platform.
The announcement is the latest move in a dispute between the world’s richest man and Brazil’s Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is spearheading efforts to combat fake news and hate speech in Latin America’s largest economy.
“Moraes threatened our legal representative in Brazil with arrest if we did not comply with his censorship orders,” X’s Global Government Affairs division said in an online post. “He did so in a secret order that we are publishing here to expose his actions.”
A spokesman for Brazil’s Supreme Court declined to comment. X responded to questions from Bloomberg with an automated response. Musk called The decision to close the office was “difficult,” it says in a separate post.
It is unclear how large X’s operations are in Brazil. According to data firm Sensor Tower, the platform had around 20 million active users in the country in the first quarter, down around 15 percent from a year ago.
Brazil’s Supreme Court has ordered the blocking of prominent users’ social media accounts, forced the deletion of posts and threatened to temporarily shut down entire platforms. Musk threatened with disrespect the court’s orders, whereupon the court Investigation on him.