Elon Musk is an imperfect mascot for free speech — but he’s got a point on Brazil

X owner Elon Musk is clashing with Brazil’s government over free speech. 

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Billionaire businessman and X owner Elon Musk, a self-styled free-speech absolutist, has for months been locked in a public feud with Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes over content moderation concerns.

But this time, despite his poor track record of actually living up to the values he espouses — for example, he has readily complied with moderation orders from India’s increasingly authoritarian Prime Minister Narendra Modi — Musk might actually have a point.

The battle between Musk and de Moraes hinges on government requests to ban social media accounts associated with extremist groups engaging in disinformation campaigns favoring Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s ousted far-right president.

Musk has repeatedly refused to abide by de Moraes’ orders to remove accounts affiliated with the “digital militias” the justice is targeting as part of his anti-disinformation task force. Musk has also, against Brazilian law, refused to appoint a legal representative to handle government requests to remove content from the site.

In response, de Moraes has levied millions of dollars in fines against X, blocked access to the site around the country, announced plans to fine Brazilians who attempted to access the app through VPNs, and threatened a local X employee with jail time.

Despite Musk being a far-from-perfect avatar for free speech issues, the Brazilian justice has taken a more extreme stance to address disinformation than other democratic leaders — one that appears to be bordering on outright censorship, critics say.

Veridiana Alimonti, a Brazil-based expert with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Bloomberg that, by international standards of freedom of expression, it’s “problematic” to block access to an entire platform, especially one that hosts both legal and illegal speech.

“I don’t post on X anymore myself, and I will not lament its passing when it disappears,” tech journalist Casey Newton wrote in his Platformer newsletter. “But whatever role the 140 X accounts in question in Brazil may have played in threatening Brazil’s democracy, they cannot have threatened it more than silencing the 20 million or so Brazilians who have been using it regularly.”

Musk’s questionable free speech record

After he purchased Twitter in 2022, Musk quickly reduced moderation on the platform and restored accounts once banned for spreading false information, like those of former President Donald Trump and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, in the name of free speech.

More recently, he was one of the first social media moguls to defend Telegraph founder Pavel Durov when last month French police arrested Durov, in part due to his refusal to moderate content more strictly on his messaging app.

Musk’s commitment to the issue of free speech, however, is otherwise spotty, if not outright hypocritical.

The Tesla CEO has banned parody accounts that impersonated him and threatened to sue bloggers critical of him and his companies. He has also fired employees who disagreed with him.

Perhaps even more egregious, at least in the context of his battle in Brazil, Musk said last year he had no “actual choice” but to comply with government requests to restrict content in Turkey and India — both large democracies that have, in recent years, become more autocratic. One analysis by El Pais estimated that, under his leadership, X complied with 83% of requests from authoritarian governments to remove content.

Though his history on the issue is inconsistent, Musk has made himself central to the conversation about censorship, content moderation, and free speech worldwide in part by picking fights like the one he has in Brazil.

The battle in Brazil

In Brazil, the battle got real for Musk.

In addition to slapping X with more than $3 million in fines and threatening to jail the company’s employees, prompting the closure of X’s Brazilian office, de Moraes also targeted Musk’s other business ventures in the country.

The Brazilian judge briefly froze the financial accounts for Starlink — a subsidiary of Musk’s company SpaceX that provides internet connectivity through its constellation of satellites — in order to collect the fines on X.

When Starlink refused to comply with orders to block access to X in the country, Brazilian telecom regulators weighed slapping the company with sanctions and revoking the company’s license to operate.

Starlink backed down, eventually complying with legal demands to block X in Brazil, but Musk hasn’t given up.

Musk argues in memes

For now, Musk seems to be defending free speech (and X’s presence in Brazil) by publicly attacking de Moraes.

In a series of recent posts on X, Musk questioned de Moraes’ credibility and political motives, calling him “an evil dictator cosplaying as a judge” and accusing the justice of being “engaged in serious, repeated & deliberate interference” in Brazil’s most recent presidential election, during which voters elected leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva over Bolsonaro.

He has also shared images of de Moraes alongside Lord Voldemort from the “Harry Potter” franchise and suggested the judge belongs behind bars.

These attacks may ultimately work against Musk and his companies.

His decision not to appeal de Moraes’ orders in court (and instead turn the topic into a battle of memes online) has scattered about 20 million active Brazillian X users to new platforms, including Bluesky and Threads.

“Where this is heading from here will really depend on Elon Musk. I think if Elon Musk decides to start to comply, as he eventually did in India, for example, it might be that X comes back,” Mariana Valente, a law professor and the director of Brazil’s InternetLab, a think tank, told Bloomberg. “But if Elon Musk doesn’t act differently, I think X or Twitter will be blocked in Brazil for a long time.”