Brazil's top court orders nationwide suspension of Elon Musk's X

Brazil's supreme court on Friday ordered a nationwide suspension of Elon Musk's social network X after the company vowed to defy earlier court orders concerning content moderation and the appointment of a legal representative in the country.

Alexandre de Moraes, the court's top judge, has also ordered daily fines for people or businesses in Brazil that use virtual private networks (VPNs) or other methods to access X while the site is banned in the country, G1 Globo reported.

The court issued a statement via its government website in Brazil on Friday, saying that it had ordered "the immediate and complete suspension of the operation of X, formerly Twitter, throughout the national territory until the Court's judicial decisions are complied with and the fines applied are paid." The statement also said that the order will be valid "until a representative of the company in the country is appointed."

Hours later, the court issued a second order suspending some of the measures in its first 51-page order against X. Initially, de Moraes gave companies like Apple and Google 5 days to stop offering X downloads in their app stores, and to stop making VPN apps available to access X. The second order eliminated that deadline and put off implementation of these measures until further notice, giving time for X to pay fines and put a legal representative in place.

Brazil's supreme court announced on Wednesday that Musk and X had 24 hours to either appoint a legal representative for its business there or face a "penalty of suspension of activities" nationwide. The deadline passed Thursday evening.

X's global government affairs unit said in a statement late Thursday that it was expecting the de Moraes shutdown "soon," because the company "would