# X goes offline in Brazil after Elon Musk’s refusal to comply with local laws Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/aug/31/x-offline-brazil-elon-musk Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/X-goes-offline-in-Brazil-after-Elon-Musks-refusal-to-comply-with-local-laws?index=0x66d344d73adfb90dc8afea6e0e2177677d51713528f035a821038d99dcc33d137e50e3c6 Submitted by misha on 2024-08-31 UTC, 1 upvote, 6 comments ## Summary X has been blocked in Brazil, the country with the fifth largest digital population, after the supreme court ordered the ban because Elon Musk refused to comply with local laws. Millions of Brazilian users lost access on Saturday as internet providers and mobile phone companies enforced the ban, which affects more than 22 million users in the country. Justice Alexandre de Moraes accused X of operating like a "no man's land" that allowed the "massive propagation" of misinformation, hate speech and anti-democratic attacks. Bluesky reported gaining 500,000 users in the past two days, and Musk called Moraes "a dictator and a fraud." ## Article One of the world’s most popular social networks, X, has gone offline in Brazil – the country with the fifth largest digital population – after Elon Musk’s refusal to comply with local laws meant it was blocked by the supreme court. Millions of Brazilian X users found themselves unable to access the network on Saturday morning as internet providers and mobile phone companies began to enforce the ban. When the Guardian tried to access the network on its computer and mobile phone, it received a message reading: “Seems like you lost connectivity. We’ll keep retrying.” Large numbers of Brazilians sought shelter on the rival network, Bluesky, which reported that it had gained 500,000 users in the past two days. “Welcome to Bluesky!” the company posted to its new adherents in Portuguese. Bluesky’s new members included Felipe Neto, one of Brazil’s top social media influencers with more than 17 million X followers. “Don’t forget, when you go to another country, you’re obliged to follow its legislation, even if you disagree with it,” Neto wrote. The banning of X, which has more than 22 million users in Brazil, is the climax of a politically charged, months-long arm wrestle between the country’s top court and the rightwing tech billionaire. Alexandre de Moraes, the influential supreme court judge responsible for the ban, had been spearheading an attempt to force X to purge anti-democratic, far-right voices in the wake of the January 2023 uprising in the capital, Brasília, carried out by supporters of the former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro. Musk, who has aligned himself with rightwing figures including Bolsonaro and his US ally Donald Trump, pushed back, accusing Moraes of squelching free speech and trying to censor conservative views. Musk’s public attacks on Moraes – many of them infantile and vulgar – were reminiscent of his repeated online digs at the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, during the recent far-right UK riots, which X’s owner was accused of inflaming. The final straw before X’s blocking in Brazil came on Thursday, when Musk ignored a 24-hour deadline to name a new legal representative after the social media platform closed its local office in mid-August. In Friday’s ruling ordering the ban, Moraes accused X of treating the social network “like a no man’s land – a veritable land without law” by allowing the “massive propagation” of misinformation, hate speech and anti-democratic attacks. Hours later, at shortly after midnight local time, Brazilian users began noticing that X had expired. Musk ramped up his attacks on Moraes, calling the judge “Voldemort” and tweeting a meme of a dog dangling its scrotum in the face of another animal. “He is a dictator and a fraud, not a justice,” Musk wrote on X, although Brazilian users could no longer read his words without using a virtual private network (VPN). Prominent rightwing voices rallied to Musk’s side, underlining the growing affinity between the Brazilian far right and the world’s richest person. “I’m going to radicalise, even it I do it on my own,” vowed Nikolas Ferreira, a prominent rightwing congressman, in the hours before X was blocked. “You are a freedom fighter,” Musk replied. Progressive Brazilians scoffed at Musk’s claim to be defending free speech, with many celebrating the supreme court’s decision to show X’s owner that he was not above the law. “If billionaires want to have companies that make billions in these parts, they need to learn to respect the laws. Long live the rule of law and national sovereignty,” the leftwing congresswoman Erika Hilton wrote on X late on Friday night. In a second valedictory message, posted about half an hour before the ban came into force, Hilton announced she had relocated to Bluesky. “See you there soon,” she wrote. ## Comments **misha**: We do all the X users go? This article suggests Bluesky. I have seen some Brazilian artists pop up on Farcaster and Lens which I hadn’t seen for a while this morning. But there seems to be no mayor uptick on decentralized social. Maybe I’m wrong. Are decentralized social capturing the potential of this event? **tim**: Funnily enough Bluesky is just growing absolutely crazy. Like there was once a time when I was still on Farcaster when Bluesky was still smaller. It‘s now probably 10x bigger than Farcaster. Maybe if you truly wanna win on that front you have to dial up the anti Elon messaging a lot, kinda how Bluesky did. After all why would anyone disenfranchised by Elon go in Farcaster? From what I know Dan is his greatest fan and FC‘s more of a backup plan in case X goes away, or not? But yeah you‘re right. If people cared about being on X, and it gets banned, I imagine FC is the next best thing technologically. **misha**: Ok, I logged into my Bluesky account for the first time after I made it like probably more than a year ago. Funnily a lot of people I know from crypto art space have an account but most of them no posts or posted like a year ago last. I don’t know, the whole thing still looks boring boring boring, like everything is boring. But yes, there is activity. NY Times bot posts a lot. Looks like there’s some communities; LGTBQ+ people seem active, they might have found a safe haven there. Anyway I can’t imagine myself active there like it is now. Hope some Brazilians find their way to Farcaster so they can’t be blocked. Oh no. What if they arrest Dan? lol. Thinking too, Brazil plans to fine people that use a VPN to go on X. You could of course ban Farcaster, but they would not be able to block it. But your government could of course still fine you or even sent you to prison if they find out you’re posting. No easy solutions. **misha**: See now they recently posted a whole page in Portugese to onboard people. Bluesky is capturing. https://bsky.social/about/blog/08-29-2024-pacotes-iniciais **misha**: Dan’s perspective: > Chasing users fleeing another platform is not a long-term valuable strategy. Effort is better spent trying to figure out the compelling reason for people to join the network independently. If you have that, then you can use sudden external entropy to help grow. But sign ups for the sake of sign ups don’t matter. https://warpcast.com/dwr.eth/0x7d6f5d72 **tim**: > Chasing users fleeing another platform is not a long-term valuable strategy. and > But sign ups for the sake of sign ups don’t matter. From what I know Bluesky has way more DAU than FC, so they haven‘t just chased sign ups, they also seem to retain some users. Plus, how many people on Bluesky are the chasing airdrops vs on FC ;)