Elon Musk’s X closes office in Brazil and talks about ‘threats’ by Justice Alexandre de Moraes

Brasil de Fato

Social media platform X, formerly Twitter, closed its office in Brazil on Saturday (17). Billionaire Elon Musk’s social platform announced its decision in a post in which he blames alleged threats by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes targeting his (now) former employees. About 30 people were fired, according to Brazilian news outlet ICL Notícias.

ICL reported that employees were informed about the layoff also on Saturday in a virtual meeting with X president, Linda Yaccarino. “They informed us through an all hands meeting today, scheduled for today. A lot of people have not even seen the invite,” said a former employee, who opted to remain anonymous.

Shortly before noon, X published a statement informing that, on Friday (16), Moraes had supposedly threatened the company’s legal representative in Brazil with imprisonment for failing to comply with court orders he issued. “He did so in a secret order, which we share here to expose his actions,” it stated.

“Despite our numerous appeals to the Supreme Court not being heard, the Brazilian public not being informed about these orders and our Brazilian staff having no responsibility or control over whether content is blocked on our platform, Moraes has chosen to threaten our staff in Brazil rather than respect the law or due process,” the company added. “As a result, to protect the safety of our staff, we have decided to close our operations in Brazil, effective immediately.”

According to the company, X is still available to the Brazilian population. This Saturday, however, the platform was unstable, according to the DownDetector website. Complaints about X functioning peaked at 11 am.

X had more than 100 workers in Brazil until it was bought by Musk. In 2022, it went through a mass layoff process.

Throughout the day, Musk made several posts on the subject, always accusing the Supreme Court, especially Moraes. In one of them, the billionaire, heir to emerald deposits in South Africa, said that “there is no doubt that Moraes needs to go.” The post was a response to a tweet by federal deputy Nikolas Ferreira (Liberal Party), in which the parliamentarian invited Musk to a demonstration in São Paulo, to be held on September 7 (Brazil’s Independence Day), for the impeachment of Alexandre de Moraes.

No question that Moraes needs to leave. Having a “justice” who repeatedly and egregiously violates the law is no justice at all. https://t.co/9luG9oDmOU

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 17, 2024

Musk has previously published calls for Moraes’ impeachment and criticized what he considers to be the justice’s censorship.

Alexandre de Moraes is the Supreme Court rapporteur for inquiries investigating the spread of disinformation on social media platforms, especially about the fairness of electronic voting machines. In this context, he is the author of orders that have suspended profiles involved in spreading disinformation about the Brazilian electoral process.