American newspaper editorial Washington Postpublished this Wednesday (5), defended billionaire Elon Musk in the conflict with the minister of the Supreme Federal Court (STF) Alexandre de Moraes over the unilateral suspension of the activities of the social network X in Brazil. According to the newspaper, the decision of the Brazilian judge attacks freedom of expression in the country.
“The billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX is correct when he says that a Brazilian jurist’s decision to unilaterally ban X, which he owns, from operating in the country is an attack on freedom of expression on the internet around the world,” reads an excerpt from the editorial.
THE Post analyzes that the STF judge began a quest to clean up “online misinformation” years ago, demanding that platforms remove profiles and content that he considered “threatening to democracy.”
However, this initiative by Moraes came at a high cost to free speech, according to the newspaper. “Mr. Moraes’ campaign has come at a substantial cost to free speech — with takedowns and even arrest warrants often issued in secret and with scant reasoning to support them.”
According to the Postthis decision by the Brazilian minister sounds authoritarian. “Whatever threat to democracy the accounts Mr. Moraes wanted to eliminate may have posed, the threat of a government official limiting the speech of 220 million people is greater,” the newspaper stressed.
One of the points highlighted in the critical opinion of the Washington Post with the suspension, the X in Brazil was the freezing of assets of Starlink, an internet provider created by Musk, in order to cover the payment of fines imposed by the minister on the social network. According to the newspaper, “this measure aligns Brazil not with the free world”, but with dictatorships such as China and Russia.
The editorial also criticizes a statement by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who said: “the world is not obliged to put up with the extreme right free for all [do Sr. Musk] just because he’s rich.”
According to the Post“Brazilians should not have to put up with a government suppressing political views, no matter how abhorrent a court may find this”, arguing that regardless of political thought, everyone should have the right to speak their mind and be assured of due process.
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