Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes deactivates his X account
The verified account of Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes on the social network X was deactivated on Friday (Feb. 21). Anyone who tries to access the profile receives the message “This account does not exist.”
A few hours after the deactivation, the court’s press office stated it was Justice Moraes himself who deactivated the profile, on which he had last posted in January 2024.
The deactivation comes a day after Justice Moraes ordered X to immediately pay the BRL 8.1 million fine imposed on the company in October last year for failing to take down the profile of blogger Allan dos Santos, who posted fake conversations attributed to a journalist.
The Santos’ account was eventually taken down by the platform, but the profile information was not sent to the Supreme Court because X said it does not keep such data.
The company appealed the fine, but the appeals were rejected by the justice.
Clash
Justice Moraes has often been attacked by businessman Elon Musk, who bought Twitter in 2022 and changed the name of the social network to X. Musk has adopted a radical stance in defense of freedom of expression. Since then, the company has stopped moderating offensive content that was previously deleted.
Musk directly criticizes Moraes for the decisions in which the justice orders the suspension of X accounts. In his profile, the entrepreneur also criticizes the conduct of criminal proceedings against those involved in the attacks of January 8, 2023, when supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro invaded and plundered government headquarters in Brasília.
Moraes went as far as ordering X to be taken offline in Brazil in October last year. He ended up allowing the platform to run again after the company appointed a legal representative in Brazil, as requested by the court authorities.
