For a few hours, many believed it. But that will ultimately be for later. On Saturday, September 21, Alexandre de Moraes, a judge at the Supreme Federal Court, confirmed the suspension of the social network X in Brazil. However, the day before, the group, owned by Elon Musk, had announced the appointment of a legal representative in the country, a condition imposed to end the blockade. But the gesture was deemed insufficient by the courts. AX was given five days to submit additional documents.
The confrontation between the billionaire and the magistrate has been going on for almost a month, who on August 30 ordered the suspension “complete and whole” of the social network in Brazil. Accused of being an incubator of fake news and a refuge for far-right “digital militias,” the group refused to obey court orders, which had ordered the blocking of accounts of personalities suspected of threatening democracy.
More than three and a half hours a day on social media
Constrained and forced, the platform’s 22 million local users had to adapt. “Brazil has suddenly become the laboratory of a “life without X” », testifies Joao Victor Archegas, a legal researcher at the Institute of Technology and Society in Rio de Janeiro. In a country “addicted” to smartphones, the event is a milestone. According to Kepios, a consultancy specializing in digital technology, a Brazilian spends on average three hours and thirty-seven minutes a day on social networks, or four and a half days a month…
“The suspension first affected the many Brazilian influencers who promote products or events online”Mr Archegas continues. For example, the lawyer and publicist Babi Magalhaes, 34, who had more than 400,000 subscribers on X. “That’s where we learned [la tenue d’un] event first, immediately or a few minutes after it occurred. The other platforms were content to reproduce and amplify the news”decipher.
But with the blocking of the social network, the influencer found herself, according to her words, “unemployed”. “I tried to move my business to the Threads and Bluesky platforms [dont le fonctionnement est similaire à celui de X], But the vast majority of my subscribers aren’t there. I also try to be active on Instagram, but it’s a visual language, based on images, that I find very difficult to master. You have to be pretty, made up, well lit… that’s not my thing: I prefer to write.”regrets Babi Magalhaes.
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