Courts

Elon Musk Would Rather Have Twitter Shut Down Than Take The Smallest Amount Of Responsibility

Looks like the Earth is finally deciding!

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Milken Institute’s Global Conference Held In Beverly Hills

I’m not paying $3m! (Photo by Apu Gomes/Getty Images)

In some ways, Elon Musk is like the Drake of social media. In a very short time, Elon managed to tank what was indisputably one of the greatest social media apps of all time after losing a series of heavily publicized battles. His most recent L hails from Brazil, a county with around 20 million regular Twitter users.

You’d think that paying bills and being represented would be the least of an ego-driven billionaire’s worries but alas, Twitter hasn’t had a legal representative in Brazil for over a month and is several million dollars behind on fines from ignoring legal orders. Having had enough, a Brazilian judge threatened to suspend access to the app if Elon failed to comply with the order to appoint a legal representative. Elon refused to do so and the judge made good on his word. From PBS:

A Brazilian Supreme Court justice on Friday ordered the suspension of Elon Musk’s social media giant X in Brazil after the tech billionaire refused to name a legal representative in the country, according to a copy of the decision seen by The Associated Press.

Justice Alexandre de Moraes gave Twitter 24 hours to name a representative and has said that the platform will remain blocked until it has one. You may think that you could circumvent the blockage by simply using a VPN, and you’d be right! Just don’t get caught though; doing so could result in fines of up to ~$8,909 per day. As addicting it is to mindlessly scroll Twitter, I doubt most people would spend $9K a day to support the habit.

For what it’s worth, it Elon isn’t really known for his prudence or responsibility when it comes to the app he bought for $44b — when told that his decisions would lead to bankrupting what’s being marketed as the world’s town square, he doubled down on his fuck you to advertisers and said the Earth would decide who was wrong. In what his fans would probably describe as a bold attempt to streamline effective responses, Elon had the bright idea to make the poop emoji Twitter’s de facto PR whenever journalists tried to reach out. Was Musk so busy that he couldn’t even name the “⚖️” emoji as Twitter’s legal representative?

Musk’s response was that Justice Moraes’s actions were unlawful. Shame that Brazil’s Supreme Court didn’t agree with him; they unanimously upheld the decision to block the platform.

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Some Brazilians have responded to the blockage by migrating to other platforms like Bluesky and Threads. First it was the advertisers, then UK lawyers, and now Brazilians. Elon really has a knack for driving people away from his platform!

Brazilian Judge Suspends Musk’s X Platform For Refusing To Name A Legal Representative [PBS]

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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