Social media platform X is to shutter its local operations in Brazil following a bitter legal tussle over the platform’s rights and responsibilities, owner Elon Musk said on Saturday.
The service is to remain available to Brazilian users. The closure was the apparent culmination of an ongoing legal battle between Musk and Brazilian Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes, who has said he is trying to fight the spread of dangerous disinformation online.
Moraes had “threatened our legal representative in Brazil with arrest if we do not comply with his censorship orders,” a post from X’s Global Government Affairs Department said on Saturday.
Photo: AFP
It said the office closure was necessary “to protect the safety of our staff.”
“The responsibility lies solely with Alexandre de Moraes,” it added.
The Brazilian government was critical of X’s stance, with Brazilian Secretary of Digital Policies Joao Brant writing on the platform that the company had a “pathetic attitude.”
X would force a “probable escalation that could lead to blocking of the platform,” he added.
Moraes previously had ordered the suspension of several Twitter accounts suspected of spreading disinformation, including those of supporters of former far-right Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, who tried to discredit the voting system in the 2022 presidential election, which he lost.
“Freedom of expression doesn’t mean freedom of aggression,” Moraes has said. “It doesn’t mean the freedom to defend tyranny.”
Musk and other critics have said Moraes is part of a sweeping crackdown on free speech.
Musk said that had X complied with Moraes’s orders, “there was no way we could explain our actions without being ashamed.”
In April, Moraes ordered an investigation of Musk.
An order seen by AFP showed Moraes accusing Musk of “criminal instrumentalization” of the platform.
Musk had reactivated banned accounts, and Moraes said he threatened the billionaire with a fine of about US$20,000 for each instance.
“Social networks are not lands without laws,” Moraes wrote.
Musk responded that while X might lose its Brazilian revenue, “principles matter more than profit.”
In Italy’s storied gold-making hubs, jewelers are reworking their designs to trim gold content as they race to blunt the effect of record prices and appeal to shoppers watching their budgets. Gold prices hit a record high on Thursday, surging near US$5,600 an ounce, more than double a year ago as geopolitical concerns and jitters over trade pushed investors toward the safe-haven asset. The rally is putting undue pressure on small artisans as they face mounting demands from customers, including international brands, to produce cheaper items, from signature pieces to wedding rings, according to interviews with four independent jewelers in Italy’s main
Macronix International Co (旺宏), the world’s biggest NOR flash memory supplier, yesterday said it would spend NT$22 billion (US$699.1 million) on capacity expansion this year to increase its production of mid-to-low-density memory chips as the world’s major memorychip suppliers are phasing out the market. The company said its planned capital expenditures are about 11 times higher than the NT$1.8 billion it spent on new facilities and equipment last year. A majority of this year’s outlay would be allocated to step up capacity of multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory chips, which are used in embedded multimedia cards (eMMC), a managed
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has talked up the benefits of a weaker yen in a campaign speech, adopting a tone at odds with her finance ministry, which has refused to rule out any options to counter excessive foreign exchange volatility. Takaichi later softened her stance, saying she did not have a preference for the yen’s direction. “People say the weak yen is bad right now, but for export industries, it’s a major opportunity,” Takaichi said on Saturday at a rally for Liberal Democratic Party candidate Daishiro Yamagiwa in Kanagawa Prefecture ahead of a snap election on Sunday. “Whether it’s selling food or
In the wake of strong global demand for AI applications, Taiwan’s export-oriented economy accelerated with the composite index of economic indicators flashing the first “red” light in December for one year, indicating the economy is in booming mode, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Moreover, the index of leading indicators, which gauges the potential state of the economy over the next six months, also moved higher in December amid growing optimism over the outlook, the NDC said. In December, the index of economic indicators rose one point from a month earlier to 38, at the lower end of the “red” light.
RSS