Brazil and Elon Musk’s Confrontation Escalates as Starlink Could Be Sanctioned

Brazil has threatened new sanctions against Elon Musk’s satellite internet company Starlink. According to Reuters, the country’s telecoms regulator Anatel could soon punish Starlink for not blocking domestic access to X.

Last Friday, the Supreme Court in Brazil, under Judge Alexandre de Moraes’s ruling, ordered to suspend access to the social media platform X across the country. Moraes also announced daily fines of up to $10,000 to those who use VPNs to access the platform.

Despite the high price of the fine, VPN usage has significantly increased in the past few days according to TechRadar, making it difficult for the government to track all users.

“De Moraes deserves prison for his crimes,” wrote Musk on X, along with multiple complaints about the judge’s ruling.

Starlink is the only telecommunication company that told Anatel that it will not comply with the judge’s order, according to declarations from Anatel commissioner Artur Coimbra. Coimbra also explained that Starlink said that it would not block X until the government stopped freezing its Brazilian bank accounts. The accounts were frozen after X refused to pay the fines ordered by the Brazilian justice institutions.

The president of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has backed Judge Moraes’ decisions. “The Brazilian judiciary may have given an important signal that the world is not obliged to put up with Musk’s far-right ideology just because he is rich,” said Lula in an interview with CNN this week.

According to CNBC, the dispute between Elon Musk and Brazil has been going on for months, since the government required X to block popular accounts on its platform in April and the company refused. Now the country has municipal elections in October, and the conflict has escalated. X recently removed its staff from Brazil.

Elon Musk’s companies have not been the only tech giants dealing with disagreements with the Brazilian government, Meta withdrew its AI services in the country in July.