Elon Musk attacks Brazil’s X ban with VPN meme containing one big mistake

In the latest news surrounding the chaotic and controversial social media platform that is Twitter/X, the site has now been banned in Brazil, with owner Elon Musk sharing a meme containing one glaring mistake to call out the government’s decision.

The country’s supreme court ordered a “complete and immediate suspension” of Twitter/X last week, after Musk failed to comply with Judge Alexandre de Moraes’ order to name a legal representative in the South American country.

Brazilian law requires foreign companies operating in the country to have legal representation, but X removed such a representative last month after de Moraes threatened them with arrest.

Musk hasn’t named a new representative for the country, and so the site has been suspended in the country, and will remain that way until the company complies with the judge’s orders and it pays 18.5 million rais (£2.5 million) in fines.

Obviously, such a move has an impact on the 40 million monthly users estimated to be in the country, as they can no longer access the platform, but Judge Moraes has also warned individuals and companies looking to bypass the ban by using a virtual private network (a VPN, where users can change their digital location to access geo-locked content, for example) face a faily fine of 50,000 reais (£6,785) “without prejudice to other sanctions in the civil and criminal spheres”.

And it’s this particular point which Musk has joked about in posts on Twitter/X, sharing a meme depicting a man sleeping on a bed of dollar bills, captioned “POV [point of view]: VPN companies after Brazil banned twitter”.

Yet away from the debate around Brazil’s ban of the platform, many couldn’t help but notice that Musk referred to the platform by its former name, despite all his best efforts to get everyone to call it ‘X’:

Last year saw Musk update the site’s Terms of Service to eliminate all mention of ‘Twitter’, ‘tweets’ and ‘retweets’, and when author Stephen King mocked the Tesla founder by repeatedly referring to the platform by its old name, Musk clapped back by saying “it hurts our feelings when you deadname” – a reference to his long-standing opposition to trans rights as part of the “woke mind virus”.

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