On September 2, a judge in Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of upholding a ban on Elon Musk’s X in the country. It was the final chapter in a long-running feud between Musk and the Brazillian courts.
The conflict began after Musk accused Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes of threatening X’s legal representative with a potential arrest if the platform did not comply with “censorship” orders. Musk then closed operations in the country on August 17.
By August 28, this escalated further. Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered X to appoint a new legal representative within 24 hours or face a ban on their app in the country.
Now that the justice has followed through on the threat of an X ban in Brazil, it appears an unlikely community is in tatters: stan Twitter.
Which accounts in Brazil are affected by the X ban?
Evidently, Brazillians run some of the most (in)famous celebrity stan accounts. Those affected include Timothée Chalamet Updates, Dianna Agron Updates, and numerous other stan accounts for celebrities like Ariana Grande, Miley Cyrus, Bruno Mars, and Chappell Roan.
Moreover, as pointed out by internet culture journalist Taylor Lorenz in her newsletter, Brazilian X stan creators and communities have been instrumental in making pop culture history. Specific examples include the self-ran stan account campaigns to support the 2013 release of Lady Gaga’s Artpop and BTS’ 2018 comeback single ‘Fake Love.’
X user @DIVASSEMBLE said it best when they tweeted, “The entire stan economy going down in this way is like… detrimental to the very foundation of pop culture.”
Other Brazillian Twitter creators fell victim to the ban. Examples include Poorly Drawn Cats, Virginia Woolf Bot, and 21metgala.
While the Brazil ban is a big loss for X, one platform that’s definitely benefiting from this all is Twitter-alternative Bluesky. As reported by TechCrunch, it’s now number one on the free iPhone app chart. Furthermore, Bluesky itself claimed it was seeing an “all-time high” of user activity.
Further reading:
- The Global Alliance for Responsible Media Is ‘Discontinuing’ Amid X Lawsuit
- How X Could Make Itself More Creator-Friendly
- X Declares War on Advertisers
- What the Battle Between Twitter, Bluesky, and Threads Means for Creators
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