Elon Musk and X are using social media to rally supporters and spread legally questionable claims about Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes after he suspended X from serving in the country.

The suspension comes after X failed to appoint a legal representative in the country to deal with Brazilian court orders and requests to moderate content. Musk has refused to comply with de Moraes’ court orders to remove misinformation from the platform under Brazilian speech laws.

But through the mobilization of his platform and large following, Musk has sought to spread his own ideas about the ruling, including the belief that de Moraes is usurping the rights to due process and democracy in order to suppress free speech.

Musk and X have used the platform itself to amplify their interpretation of events, in the process spreading misleading information about how law and government operate in Brazil. Posts by Brazilian academics and journalists shedding light on the situation have gained significantly less traction, while Musk’s fan base and his conservative allies continue to stoke negativity toward de Moraes. The result is an informational divide that leaves X users navigating two different realities about why X is banned in Brazil, depending on whether their channel is influenced by Musk or those who oppose him.

Following the Brazilian rulings, X created an official X-affiliated account called “Alexandre Files,” which went live on August 31, with Musk scheduling a “daily data dump” of the account. The account has made 21 posts to date and has attracted more than 124 million views and more than 377,000 followers, with posts referring to de Moraes’ rulings as “unlawful,” “illegal,” and “abuses of Brazilian law.” Uncensored, previously sealed court orders sent to X by de Moraes and later released by X reveal sensitive personal information about individuals in the case, including the Brazilian version of social security numbers. The orders, sent by de Moraes, refer to requests to remove the posts, which he describes as intimidating and exposing law enforcement officials and their families, including their minor children.

Musk also attacked de Moraes from his personal X account, the most popular on the platform, calling him a “fake ‘judge,’” the “Brazilian Voldemort” and a “criminal.” Musk has called for de Moraes to be imprisoned, as well as an end to foreign aid being sent to Brazil and the seizure of Brazilian government assets.

But experts say Musk is misinterpreting Brazilian free speech law, how the government operates and the context of de Moraes’ court orders.

“Our free speech laws are different from the First Amendment in this country, just as Europe has a very different understanding,” said David Nemer, an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Virginia who is from Brazil and has studied disinformation and the rise of the Brazilian far right. “Hate speech is not protected in Brazil.”

In Brazil, if someone posts disinformation or defamation of a candidate on social media, the Supreme Electoral Court can force them to remove it, Nemer said. He added that during Brazil’s 2022 presidential election, “there were digital militias that organized all kinds of disinformation and disinformation campaigns to delegitimize the electoral process.”

“They were saying things like, ‘The voting machines were hacked, don’t trust the results,’” Nemer said, comparing the rhetoric to the 2020 U.S. presidential election denial. He added that Brazil even had its own version of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection in the U.S., and that the insurrection at the Brazilian Capitol took place in 2023. Some of the X accounts examined by de Moraes belong to elected officials and prominent business leaders, just as some U.S. officials and business leaders have promoted election denial. But in Brazil, such activity is illegal.

“If the person does not remove the post, the court will order the platform to remove the post,” Nemer said. “If the platform fails to do so, the platform also bears criminal and civil liability for the post.”

Other Brazilian pundits and journalists have also spoken out against Musk’s narrative on X. Natalia Viana, co-founder of Brazilian investigative media outlet Agência Pública, wrote: “Twitter is blocked in Brazil because Brazilian law states that any social media company operating in Brazil must have a legal representative in the country. Elon Musk deliberately chose not to comply. But there are laws in other countries besides the US, you know? Don’t fall for Musk’s ‘censorship’ gimmick.”

João Brant, Brazil’s secretary of digital policy, wrote: “X/Twitter is suspended in Brazil by a court order issued by the Supreme Court after repeated failure to comply with court rulings. The suspension affects 20 million users in Brazil, but the courts have deemed it a necessary measure to enforce Brazilian law.”

“The Brazilian Internet Civil Rights Framework states that platforms are not responsible for third-party content, but they can be held accountable if they fail to comply with court orders. Ignoring court orders effectively means complacency in crimes on platforms,” Brant continued. “It is worth remembering that the suspension is temporary until the company complies with court orders, pays the fines due and appoints a representative in Brazil. In other words, it is entirely up to the company to restart the service.”

Musk’s campaign against Brazil’s social media laws has run parallel to his support for Donald Trump’s re-election campaign. Musk has argued that if Vice President Kamala Harris wins, the U.S. could clamp down on free speech in the same way Brazil has. “The Alexandre Files” also harkens back to Musk’s earlier attempts to allege that former Twitter employees worked with the U.S. Democratic Party to suppress conservative accounts, in a similar document dump known as the “Twitter Files.”

In both cases, some of the characterizations in Musk’s documents are not accurate, but he is using his large following, the X platform itself, and his supporter base to promote his narrative. Nemer said Musk and far-right politicians in Brazil are acting in their own interests, with the politicians using X to spread disinformation and Musk potentially benefiting from their legislative power and support for his companies.

“They want Musk, someone very powerful and very well-known, to also challenge de Moraes to delegitimize him,” Nemer said. “By helping these far-right politicians, Musk can be sure that no regulation that would affect social media will be passed because these politicians will not allow it.”

After Musk took over Twitter in 2022, the platform ended its long-standing practice of publishing aggregated transparency reports on government and other legal requests it received. During his leadership, Musk has complied with most takedown requests from authoritarian governments, including those in India, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, some of whose officials hold the second-largest investor stake in X.

In response to Brazil’s X ban, Nemer said Musk had made false statements, such as that Brazil was no longer a democracy, that the Supreme Electoral Court was working with President Lula da Silva, and that there was no way to challenge or appeal de Moraes’ decisions.

“He is only doing this because he has the support of far-right politicians,” Nemer said.

Nemer also said the “Alexandre Files” account changed X’s role from that of a publisher of user-generated content, a description under Section 230 of U.S. law that protects social media platforms from liability for what users post, to that of a communications platform, such as a news organization, that is liable for the information it disseminates.

“There seems to be a paradigm shift here, where we see X communicating with the public and informing or disinforming them,” Nemer said. “It’s already in trouble in Brazil. The platform is entering strange territory.”

Although Platform X ranked tenth among the most used social media by Brazilians, Nemer said it could still be useful for scientists, journalists, politicians, celebrities, fans and others.

“While I understand and agree with what de Moraes is doing, I’m also disappointed because Twitter was an important platform for me,” he said. “Nobody is happy about it, but the people who agree with Alexandre de Moraes understand that this is a matter of sovereignty, that Musk can’t just come in and break the law and expect everything to work for him no matter what.”