Clear the X in Brazil

By: Carlos Cortés

This text originally appeared in the Network of Experts on Democracy and Technology in alliance with La Silla Vacía.

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Among the half dozen speeches given by President Gustavo Petro last week, the new nemesis appeared. The same one that Nicolás Maduro called "archenemy" shortly after the electoral fraud, also somewhere in his six or seven speeches during those days. The billionaire Trumpist whom the Brazilian justice system is trying to bring to heel. The owner of X. The troll who bought Twitter.

"Now where I express myself there is a Nazi-prone gentleman: Elon Musk or however he pronounces himself. At any moment he closes my account. And then Pinochet's thesis, silence before barbarism, applies", said the President in his increasingly labyrinthine verb. His words were heard at the 'Meeting of alternative, community and digital media', an event of 1,500 people that at times seemed more like the enlistment of a contingent for Petro's public defense in regional radio stations, web pages and social network tribunes.

That Petro and Maduro have found in Musk an antagonist to recycle their harangues against the media hegemony is hardly obvious (that they had done it in almost successive acts, no doubt, telling). Under the Tesla founder, Twitter became a conservative, reactionary and hostile political project. And although nothing interests Musk less than removing Latin American presidents from his platform -the protagonist players in his circus show-, the double status he holds as a right-wing global influencer and owner of the ad has become a democratic challenge and a matter of state.

In Brazil, X has been blocked for two weeks. For some time now, the platform has been failing to comply with court orders to remove content and suspend accounts, many of them related to the insurrection in Brazil in January last year. In the image and likeness of the assault on the Capitol in Washington in 2021, followers of the then recently defeated Jair Bolsonaro barricaded themselves in X and messaging platforms to spread disinformation, distribute threats and intimidation, and coordinate.

In both cases there are many questions about the relationship between these online activities and the riots in the streets, and judicial investigations are a necessary step to resolve them. However, in Brazil they have also become a tool to collect political debts with bolsonarismo and repair the wounded ego. According to Folha de Sao Paulo, the powerful judge of Brazil's Supreme Federal Court, Alexandre de Moraes, opened investigations to simple critics and demonstrators, and ordered X to suspend the account of gospel singer Davi Sacer, who had shared videos of protests against him in New York. In the manner of the continent's left and right-wing leaders, Bolsonaro has put judges in the crosshairs of his base's indignation.

The official requirements of the Supreme Court towards X have been known in detail by X. As soon as the blocking order was given, Musk created the Alexandre Files account on his platform - a strategy we had already seen before with the Twitter Files."Today, we begin to shed light on the abuses of Brazilian law committed by Alexandre de Moraes," -says the tweet posted on the profile-. "A secret justice is no justice at all. Today we say that must change."

By skipping the usual internal processes that platforms have to deal with judicial and police processes with States, which Musk dismantled when he arrived, X in self-defense is a planetary megaphone in the public opinion auditorium; it is a bazooka to make its way in this new old west. Musk always had tweets to disqualify De Moraes-whom he calls a "brutal dictator." But this is something else. Turning the defunct Twitter into a function of his cause against a country is a nuclear risk.

Removal and suspension orders that X refuses to comply with in Brazil are complied with docilely in India or Turkey. For Musk, authoritarianisms are problematic as a function of friendships and the interests of Tesla and his other businesses. In our neighborhood, he bares his teeth at a court magistrate; in another, he wags his tail at Recep Tayyib Erdogan.

The decisions of the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court in the X case are questionable to varying degrees in terms of proportionality, due process and freedom of expression. As analyzed a few days ago by several colleagues, there are points to be discussed around the generalized blocking, the ban on the use of VPNs, the fines and the restrictions on app stores and operators. Equally controversial is the seizure of more than three million dollars in the bank accounts of X and Starlink - Musk's satellite internet firm - in Brazil. However, there is some consensus on the legitimacy and need for the Brazilian justice system to act.

The ethical line that Musk crossed further cracks the flimsy governance of social networks. If before this, when the debate centered on principles, laws and self-regulation, the challenge was titanic, now it seems an impossible equation. We always had the digital redeemers of Silicon Valley, but in this X dimension the road is paved for populism and cynicism, far removed from any reasonable agenda on national jurisdictions, platforms and political power. Not to go far, Mark Zuckerberg said this week that having paid so much attention to public pressure over Meta's problems has been a "twenty-year political miscalculation."

The last time President Lula posted on X was on August 30, a day before the judicial blackout. Bolsonaro also went on hiatus that Friday, after sharing several videos of his mass demonstrations in Paraná. X has about 22 million users in Brazil. Some hundreds of thousands will be accessing via private VPN connections, but many others are migrating to alternatives such as Bluesky or Threads.

X's net effect is robust, but the blockade is a drop in the bucket that may eventually break the dam. At the moment, 51% of Brazilians disagree with Alexandre de Moraes' decision and 48% support it. And, for the moment, Elon Musk does not seem to have any eagerness. He is at the center of the controversy that, beyond Brazil's borders, is happening under his tent.

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