Brasilia (Business Emerge), September 5: In an ongoing battle over free speech, Brazil’s conservative party, Partido Novo, has launched a legal challenge against a court ruling that has led to the suspension of Elon Musk’s X platform. The party claims that the ban on the social media site, which has a massive following in the country, violates constitutional rights. This challenge is now being handled by a different judge, adding another layer of complexity to the dispute.
Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes recently ordered the platform to be blocked in Brazil after it failed to comply with directives to shut down accounts accused of promoting misinformation and hate speech. According to Moraes, these accounts were a threat to the nation’s democracy. The judge also froze assets of Musk’s Starlink, a satellite internet company, potentially to use for paying penalties tied to X’s non-compliance.
Partido Novo argues that the freezing of Starlink’s assets is unjustified as it is a separate entity from X. Furthermore, they emphasize that the platform’s removal from Brazil threatens the fundamental right to freedom of speech, urging the court to lift the ban and restore access to X across the country. Jonathan Mariano, a federal prosecutor and Partido Novo’s candidate for the Rio de Janeiro city council, has publicly voiced the party’s stance, stating, “This is about defending freedom of expression.”
Musk, who has publicly referred to Moraes as a “dictator,” criticized the blocking of X as an attack on what he called “the #1 source of truth” in Brazil. In protest of the ruling, X has closed its offices in Brazil, citing censorship as the primary reason.
While Partido Novo’s legal filing this week aims to overturn the ban, the court has yet to issue any ruling. Meanwhile, neither Musk nor representatives of Starlink have provided public comments on the ongoing legal dispute.