According to the court order, any closure of the social network will have to go through the industry’s regulator.
BRASÍLIA – The reversal of the X in Brazil, decided by the Minister of Supreme Federal Court (STF) Alexander of Moraes in case of non-compliance with a court order by the entrepreneur Elon Muskyou must first go through the National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel).
At 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday 28, Moraes ordered Musk to inform, within 24 hours, who will be the new representative of the platform in Brazil, “under penalty of immediate suspension of the social network’s activities”. Jurists heard by the State consider the subpoena to be atypical and illegal. When contacted, X’s defense stated that he was “not authorized to speak about pending cases.”
If the suspension is carried out, Anatel, whose function is to act as an intermediary between the judiciary and the service providers, must be the first to act. As soon as it receives the court order, the agency must search for all companies that offer Internet access and inform them that the FST decision orders the blocking of customers’ access to X.
In this case, Starlink, which also belongs to Musk and sells satellite internet services, would also have to act to block X, risking being sanctioned by the courts. However, the company has already suffered a judicial punishment this month, when Moraes ordered the freezing of its financial resources, according to GloboNews, to guarantee the payment of the fine imposed on X, given the lack of a legal representative of the social network.
Anatel does not directly regulate digital platforms, but telecommunications companies. If one of them refuses to block access to the site subject to suspension, the company will not disobey Anatel, but a court order. Any sanctions for failure to comply with a court order are the responsibility of the Judiciary itself.
WhatsApp has been blocked in Brazil before. The first suspension decision was in 2015, with a decision by a judge in Teresina, after the company refused to provide information for a police investigation. But the request did not go offline at that time, because a judge in Piauí overturned the order.
In December of that year, a criminal court in São Bernardo do Campo, Greater São Paulo, ordered the blocking of WhatsApp, also for judicial violation. The application was inactive for users, for the first time, for about 14 hours, until an injunction from the Court of Justice allowed it to function.
Telegram was also threatened with blocking, and by Moraes as well, but it never went offline. In 2022, the Minister of the STF ordered the suspension of the application, accusing it of constantly failing to comply with court orders. At the time, the authorities wanted to block profiles identified as disseminating false information. The Federal Police said that the application was used to commit several crimes due to the difficulty of identifying users.
Source: Terra
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