A month has passed since the social network X was blocked in Brazil, without protests or street pressure to return the application. Contrary to what the billionaire Elon Musk expected, Brazilians did not see the decision of the Supreme Court or the radical judge Alexandre de Moraes as shades of censorship or authoritarianism, on the contrary, this action against fake news was adopted as important misinformation during the municipal elections taking place this month in more than 5 thousand Brazilian municipalities.
After shouting and shouting against Judge Moraes, whom he insulted and called a “dictator”, the South African businessman has been largely silent in the past two weeks, focusing on solving his problems with Brazilian law. On Tuesday, representatives of its social network in Brazil informed the Supreme Court that it would pay a court-ordered fine of around 5 million euros and that the company would comply with all of Judge Moraes’ demands.
With this information, Moraes has already decided to immediately unblock the company’s bank accounts and financial assets in the country’s Central Bank and Securities Commission, but until these payments are confirmed, the decision on the return of the network is still waiting on the magistrate’s table. Moraes requested reports on the company’s legal situation from the Federal Police and the National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel).
The reinstatement of the platform depends on the payment of these fines, but also on the appointment of a legal representative in Brazil and the suspension of judicially banned profiles for confronting democracy and freedom of expression compared to the blame attributed to a Brazilian judge.
“Full compliance” with Judge Moraes’ order
The company’s attorneys signed a petition last week reporting “full compliance” with Judge Moraes’ order.
“In full compliance with the decisions established by His Excellency (Morace), the preventive measures previously adopted,” said the letter, which has still not received a response from the court a week later.
Lawyers have five days to submit more documents regarding the appointment of lawyer Rachel de Oliveira Villa Nova as X’s legal representative. The same lawyer who held the post before the order of platform suspension and resigned from the post. . The company tried to hire other representatives, but none accepted the vacancy for fear of ending up in jail for violating Brazilian court orders. With no options left, Company X and lawyer Olivera seem to have entered into a new contract.
74% decrease in interactions
The venue has been blocked in Brazil since August 30, a month of municipal elections. The number of users talking about politics online also dropped by 60.8%.
The investigation also points to the isolation of Bolsonaro profiles on that social network aligned with right-wing and far-right agendas. Bolsonaro’s supporters have dictated the pace of conversations on X, despite a legal ban on accessing the platform through VPNs, network management tools or private networks from abroad.
“As a consequence of the restrictive measures, X has become a self-referential bubble of Bolsonarism. Those who have stayed are the right and the more extreme wing of the extreme right. There is no political center, no left. What we see on the Internet is anti-establishment speech,” said Marco Rüdiger, director of FGV Communicaco Rio. Explained “They are talking among themselves, teaching converts, they are not reaching out to anyone,” the researcher said.
For Ruediger, the suspension of X proved to be effective, which could be an indication of the organizations working in Brazil and in discussions on the regulation of digital platforms worldwide. According to the study, with the end of the polarization structure, the old Twitter ecosystem began to exhibit a configuration similar to that seen in alternative platforms used by the right, such as Parlour, Getter and Truth, used by Donald Trump supporters in the USA. . Another piece of information from the research is that the blockade in Brazil, in addition to reducing traffic and diversity in discussion, has created user migration from Meta Group to networks like Bluesky and Threads.
Victory to Bluesky
With the blockade, some of X’s users moved to networks, especially the Bluesky platform, which, ironically, was created by Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey, which Elon Musk turned into X. Brazilian user migration from X to BlueSky was wild with 1 million new users in the first three days of the court decision. The new network has already gained 2.6 million new users in the last 30 days, 85% of which are Brazilian.
According to FGV, the culture of commenting on topics in real time has migrated to Bluesky through events such as the Paralympic Games, a weekend concert in Sao Paulo and the mayoral election debates. For all this, the network
