HEDGE fund billionaire Bill Ackman joined critics of a court order to suspend Elon Musk’s X in Brazil, saying the ruling will likely drive away investors and harm the country.
On Friday (Aug 30), Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered Internet service providers in Brazil to block its users from accessing X, after the social media company refused to appoint a legal representative in the country to deal with requests to take down accounts allegedly involved in spreading political misinformation.
Moraes also ordered the freeze of funds held by another of Musk’s enterprises, Starlink, to serve as collateral for fines imposed on X for not following court decisions.
The “illegal shut down of X and account freeze at Starlink put Brazil on a rapid path to becoming an uninvestable market”, Ackman said in a post on X on Saturday night. “China committed similar acts leading to capital flight and a collapse in valuations. The same will happen to Brazil unless they quickly retreat from these illegal acts.”
Over the weekend, most of Brazil’s largest Internet providers complied with the order, pushing users in the country to migrate to some of X’s competitors. Social media network Bluesky, founded by Jack Dorsey after selling Twitter to Musk, reported one million new users in the three days ending on Saturday and published a series of posts in Portuguese to welcome Brazilians signing up for the service.
The full panel of Supreme Court justices will seek to reconvene as soon as Monday to discuss the ban and are likely to back Moraes’s ruling, local website G1 reported, citing an unnamed judge. In an interview with the newspaper Folha, chief justice Luis Roberto Barroso appeared to support the ruling, saying without mentioning X in particular that a company without legal representation in the country cannot be allowed to operate. BLOOMBERG
