Crypto community stunned as Brazil imposes ban on X
Musk mocked brazil's judge on the public platform comparing him with toilet paper
The Supreme Court of Brazil has ruled for an "immediate and complete suspension" of Elon Musk-owned Twitter, now rebranded as X, after the latter failed to name a legal representative in the South American country this week. The move has mobilised the crypto community, with much of the community reliant on X for crypto market news and seeing the government's shutdown as only underscoring the need for bitcoin and decentralised, censorship-resistant technology.
Municipal elections are due in Brazil this October, and the country of over 170 million requires tech platforms to designate legal representatives for receiving government takedown notices. According to the Brazilian government, X had not taken the necessary measures to follow that requirement amid an uptick in hate speech and disinformation on the platform.
Earlier this month, however, X announced that the company's so-called legal representative in Brazil was "threatened" with arrest and got multiple frozen bank accounts. It claimed it had of its own accord stopped operations in the country to protect staff.
The day the Brazilian ban took hold, on August 29, Musk lashed out at the judge who'd imposed it. Musk first pinned a tweet calling Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes "an evil dictator cosplaying as a judge." He also tweeted an apparent public service message urging users to download virtual private networks in order to evade the ban.
G1 Globo, a Brazilian media, reported that the Supreme Court promised to inflict a fine of 50,000 Brazilian real per day against any users that try to bypass the ban using X over VPN.
It is not the first ban on technology platforms in the country. Previously, WhatsApp, also belonging to Facebook's parent company Meta, was banned because of "total disrespect for Brazilian laws."
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The crypto community has rallied around Musk since the ban went into effect.