Platform X Officially Banned In Brazil, User Switches To Bluesky

Illustration of platform X (photo: dock. unsplash)

JAKARTA The dispute between Elon Musk and the Brazilian government has finally ended badly. Brazilian Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes officially restricted access to platform X on Saturday, August 31.

Quoted from a Bloomberg report, de Moraes has ordered Brazil's National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel) to stop access to X within 24 hours. In addition, Apple and Google are given five days to remove X from its app store.

All Brazilians who try to access X through the Virtual Privacy Network (VPN) will be subject to daily fines. They have to pay around $8,900 multiplied by the use time of platform X on their devices.

Musk and de Moraes clashed since Brazilian courts investigated X in April. This investigation was carried out because Musk reactivated the accounts ordered to be blocked by de Moraes. The accounts relate to former President Jair Bolsonaro.

In early August, Musk decided to close an office in Brazil because his legal representative was threatened with arrest on charges of violating censorship orders. On August 28, the Supreme Court ordered X to appoint a new legal representative.

This appointment must be made within 24 hours, but the platform failed to comply with the Supreme Court's request. Therefore, X is prohibited from operating from today. With the issuance of this rule, Musk said that free speech in Brazil had been broken.

"Freedom of speech is the basis of democracy and an unelected pseudo judge in Brazil destroys it for political purposes," Musk said through his personal account.

With the issuance of this ban, X users in Brazil immediately turned to alternative applications available in their country, namely Bluesky. This platform even set a record high in Brazil on August 31.

Bluesky developer Paul Frazee said that this activity is something new. "Almost surely there will be some disruptions and performance problems. We've never seen traffic like this. Stay with us!"