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  • Elon Musk’s X partners with Visa on payment service in an effort to become an ‘everything app,’

    Elon Musk’s X partners with Visa on payment service in an effort to become an ‘everything app,’

    NEW YORK — X is teaming up with Visa to soon offer a system for real-time payments on the social media platform — signaling some progress in a yearslong vision from billionaire owner Elon Musk to create an “everything app.”

    Visa is the first partner for the platform’s “X Money Account” service, which is set to launch later this year, X CEO Linda Yaccarino said in a Tuesday post announcing the news. The offering, Yaccarino noted, will support an in-platform digital wallet and peer-to-peer payments connected to users’ debit cards, with an option to transfer funds to a bank account.

    According to Visa, which also posted about the partnership on X Tuesday, these services will be powered by Visa Direct — the payment giant’s instant money transferring service — and will be available to X Money Account users in the U.S.

    Whether X Money will become available to consumers in other countries, and perhaps through additional payment partners in the near future is still known. And an exact date for the U.S. launch has also not been announced yet.

    In her post Tuesday, Yaccarino called the partnership with Visa a “milestone for the Everything App” and the “first of many big announcements about X Money this year.”

    The prospect of San Francisco-based X, formerly known as Twitter, becoming an “everything app” has been floated around for some time. Before officially closing the deal to purchase the platform for $44 billion back in 2022, Musk expressed interest in creating his own version of something similar to China’s WeChat — a “super app” that does video chats, messaging, streaming and payments.

    And his fascination with such a platform began long before the Twitter deal was on the table. Musk has been toying with the idea of an “everything app” since the late 1990s when he launched a startup called X.com that was later merged into what became X.com. He continued to push for PayPal to diversify but was rebuffed by company CEO Peter Thiel and other executives. PayPal was sold in 2002 to eBay for $1.5 billion — providing Musk with a windfall that he funneled into the creation of SpaceX and an investment in Tesla in its early days.

    The landscape is far more competitive today — with a handful of companies making similar efforts to expand their in-platform offerings. Other social media giants, such as Facebook parent Meta, have added shopping, games and even dating features.

    Consumers now have different platforms at their disposal for communications, payment services, entertainment and more. How X’s coming “everything” features will fare has yet to be seen. Since Musk’s 2022 takeover, the platform has already alienated many users and advertisers over reports of rising hate speech and misinformation.

    X’s ambitions could also thrust the company into the crosshairs of other powerful tech giants trying to fend off a perceived competitive threat. U.S. regulators have alleged that Apple, for example, has been illegally using its market power to stifle so-called super apps from making their way onto its iPhone since 2017.

    As part of an antitrust lawsuit filed last year, the U.S. Justice Department said it had uncovered evidence showing that Apple believed a super app would lessen consumers’ usage of the iPhone’s own software and services, including payment processing. The Cupertino, California, company has vehemently denied the allegations and is trying to persuade a federal judge in New Jersey to dismiss the entire case.

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    AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke contributed to this report from San Francisco.

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  • Australia rejects Elon Musk’s claim that it plans to control access to the internet

    Australia rejects Elon Musk’s claim that it plans to control access to the internet

    MELBOURNE, Australia — An Australian Cabinet minister on Friday rejected X Corp. owner Elon Musk’s allegation that the government intended to control all Australians’ access to the internet through legislation that would ban young children from social media.

    Treasurer Jim Chalmers said Musk’s criticism was “unsurprising” after the government introduced to Parliament on Thursday legislation that would fine platforms including X up to 150 million Australian dollars ($133 million) if they allow children under age 16 to hold social media accounts.

    “The idea that Elon Musk is not delighted with our steps to try and protect kids online is not an especially big surprise to us, nor does it trouble us greatly,” Chalmers told reporters.

    The spat continues months of open hostility between the Australian government and the tech billionaire over regulators’ efforts to reduce public harm from social media.

    Parliament could pass legislation as soon as next week that would oblige X, TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit and Instagram to ban young children from their platforms.

    The legislation introduced on Thursday will be debated by lawmakers in Parliament on Monday.

    Musk responded to the legislation’s introduction by posting on his platform, “Seems like a backdoor way to control access to the Internet by all Australians.”

    Asked if that was the government’s intention, Chalmers replied, “Of course not.”

    “Elon Musk having that view about protecting kids online is entirely unsurprising to us. He’s expressed similar views before,” Chalmers said.

    “Our job is not to come up with a social media policy to please Elon Musk. Our job is to put in place the necessary protection for kids online,” Chalmers added.

    In April, Musk accused Australia of censorship after an Australian judge temporarily ruled that X must block users worldwide from accessing a video of a bishop being stabbed in a Sydney church.

    Prime Minister Anthony Albanese responded by describing Musk as an “arrogant billionaire” who considered himself above the law and was out of touch with the public.

    Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, the online safety watchdog who brought the court case against X, has said the legal battle led to online attacks against her and her family, including the release online of personal information without her permission, known as doxxing.

    She said Musk had “issued a dog whistle to 181 million users around the globe” which resulted in her receiving death threats.

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  • Tesla shares soar 14% as Trump win is seen boosting Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company

    Tesla shares soar 14% as Trump win is seen boosting Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company

    NEW YORK — Shares of Tesla soared Wednesday as investors bet that the electric vehicle maker and its CEO Elon Musk will benefit from Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

    Tesla stands to make significant gains under a Trump administration with the threat of diminished subsidies for alternative energy and electric vehicles doing the most harm to smaller competitors. Trump’s plans for extensive tariffs on Chinese imports make it less likely that Chinese EVs will be sold in bulk in the U.S. anytime soon.

    “Tesla has the scale and scope that is unmatched,” said Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, in a note to investors. “This dynamic could give Musk and Tesla a clear competitive advantage in a non-EV subsidy environment, coupled by likely higher China tariffs that would continue to push away cheaper Chinese EV players.”

    Tesla shares jumped more than 14% Wednesday while shares of rival electric vehicle makers tumbled. Nio, based in Shanghai, fell 5%. Shares of electric truck maker Rivian dropped 9% and Lucid Group fell almost 8%.

    Tesla dominates sales of electric vehicles in the U.S, with 48.9% in market share through the middle of 2024, according to the Energy Information Administration.

    Subsidies for clean energy are part of the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022. It included tax credits for manufacturing, along with tax credits for consumers of electric vehicles.

    Musk was one of Trump’s biggest donors, spending at least $119 million mobilizing Trump’s supporters to back the Republican nominee. He also pledged to give away $1 million a day to voters signing a petition for his political action committee.

    In some ways, it has been a rocky year for Tesla, with sales and profit declining through the first half of the year. Profit did rise 17.3% in the third quarter.

    The U.S. opened an investigation into the company’s “Full Self-Driving” system after reports of crashes in low-visibility conditions, including one that killed a pedestrian. The investigation covers roughly 2.4 million Teslas from the 2016 through 2024 model years.

    And investors sent company shares tumbling last month after Tesla unveiled its long-awaited robotaxi at a Hollywood studio Thursday night, seeing not much progress at Tesla on autonomous vehicles while other companies have been making notable progress.

    Tesla began selling the software, which is called “Full Self-Driving,” nine years ago. But there are doubts about its reliability.

    The stock is now showing a 16% gain for the year after rising the past two days.

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  • Elon Musk’s X is back in Brazil after its suspension, having complied with all judicial demands

    Elon Musk’s X is back in Brazil after its suspension, having complied with all judicial demands

    RIO DE JANEIRO — The social media platform X began returning to Brazil on Wednesday, after remaining inaccessible for more than a month following a clash between its owner, Elon Musk, and a justice on the country’s highest court.

    Internet service providers began restoring access to the platform after Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes authorized lifting X’s suspension on Tuesday.

    De Moraes ordered the shutdown of X on Aug. 30 after a monthslong dispute with Musk over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation. Musk had disparaged de Moraes, calling him an authoritarian and a censor, although his rulings, including X’s nationwide suspension, were repeatedly upheld by his peers.

    Musk’s company ultimately complied with all of de Moraes’ demands. They included blocking certain accounts from the platform, paying outstanding fines and naming a legal representative. Failure to do the latter had triggered the suspension.

    Brazil — a highly online country of 213 million people — is one of X’s biggest markets, with estimates of its user base ranging from 20 million to 40 million.

    “X is proud to return to Brazil,” the company said in a statement posted on its Global Government Affairs account. “Giving tens of millions of Brazilians access to our indispensable platform was paramount throughout this entire process. We will continue to defend freedom of speech, within the boundaries of the law, everywhere we operate.”

    The Aug. 30 ban came two days after the company said it was removing all its remaining staff in Brazil. X said de Moraes had threatened to arrest its legal representative in the country, Rachel de Oliveira Villa Nova Conceição, if the company did not comply with orders to block accounts.

    Brazilian law requires foreign companies to have a local legal representative to receive notifications of court decisions and swiftly take any requisite action — particularly, in X’s case, the takedown of accounts.

    Conceição was first named X’s legal representative in April and resigned four months later. The company named her to the same job on Sep. 20, according to the public filing with the Sao Paulo commercial registry.

    Conceição works for BR4Business, a business services firm. Its two-page website provides no insight into its operations or staff. “Something great is on its way,” the top of the site’s main page reads in English. Its other page is an extensive privacy policy.

    Neither Conceição nor BR4Business returned multiple phone calls and emails from the AP.

    There is nothing illegal or suspect about using a company like BR4Business for legal representation, but it shows that X is doing the bare minimum to operate in the country, said Fabio de Sa e Silva, a lawyer and associate professor of International and Brazilian Studies at the University of Oklahoma.

    “It doesn’t demonstrate an intention to truly engage with the country. Take Meta, for example, and Google. They have an office, a government relations department, precisely to interact with public authorities and discuss Brazil’s regulatory policies concerning their businesses,” Silva added.

    Some of Brazilian X’s users have migrated to other platforms, such as Meta’s Threads and, primarily, Bluesky. It’s unclear how many of them will return to X. In a statement to the AP, Bluesky reported that it now has 10.6 million users and continues to see strong growth in Brazil. Bluesky has appointed a legal representative in the South American country.

    Brazil was not the first country to ban X — far from it — but such a drastic step has generally been limited to authoritarian regimes. The platform and its former incarnation, Twitter, have been banned in Russia, China, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Venezuela and Turkmenistan. Other countries, such as Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt, have also temporarily suspended X before, usually to quell dissent and unrest.

    X’s dustup with Brazil has some parallels to the company’s dealings with the Indian government three years ago, back when it was still called Twitter and before Musk purchased it for $44 billion. In 2021, India threatened to arrest employees of Twitter (as well as Meta’s Facebook and WhatsApp), for not complying with the government’s requests to take down posts related to farmers’ protests that rocked the country.

    Musk’s decision to reverse course in Brazil after publicly criticizing de Moraes isn’t surprising, said Matteo Ceurvels, research firm Emarketer’s analyst for Latin America and Spain.

    “The move was pragmatic, likely driven by the economic consequences of losing access to millions of users in its third-largest market worldwide, along with the millions of dollars in associated advertising revenue,” Ceurvels said. “Although X may not be a top priority for most advertisers in Brazil, the platform needs them more than they need it.”

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    Ortutay reported from San Francisco

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  • Musk’s X to be reinstated in Brazil after complying with Supreme Court demands

    Musk’s X to be reinstated in Brazil after complying with Supreme Court demands

    SAO PAULO — The Brazilian Supreme Court’s Justice Alexandre de Moraes on Tuesday authorized the restoration of social media platform X´s service in Brazil, over a month after its nationwide shutdown, according to a court document that was made public.

    Elon Musk’s X was blocked on Aug. 30 in the highly online country of 213 million people — and one of X’s biggest markets, with estimates of its user base ranging from 20 to 40 million. De Moraes ordered the shutdown after a monthslong dispute with Musk over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation. Musk had disparaged de Moraes, calling him an authoritarian and a censor, even though his rulings, including X’s suspension, were repeatedly upheld by his peers.

    Despite Musk’s public bravado, X ultimately complied with all of de Moraes’ demands. They included blocking certain accounts from the platform, paying outstanding fines and naming a legal representative in the country. Failure to do the latter had triggered the suspension.

    “The resumption of (X)’s activities on national territory was conditioned, solely, on full compliance with Brazilian laws and absolute observance of the Judiciary’s decisions, out of respect for national sovereignty,” de Moraes said in the court document.

    X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Just two days before the ban, on Aug. 28, X said it was removing all its remaining staff in Brazil “effective immediately,” saying de Moraes had threatened with arrest its legal representative in the country, Rachel de Oliveira Villa Nova Conceição, if X did not comply with orders to block accounts.

    Brazilian law requires foreign companies to have a local legal representative to receive notifications of court decisions and swiftly take any requisite action — particularly, in X’s case, the takedown of accounts. Conceição was first named X’s legal representative in April and resigned four months later. The company named her to the same job on Sep. 20, according to the public filing with the Sao Paulo commercial registry.

    In an apparent effort to shield Conceição from potential violations by X — and risking arrest — a clause has been written into Conceição’s new representation agreement that she must follow Brazilian law and court decisions, and that any legal responsibility she assumes on X’s behalf requires prior instruction from the company in writing, according to the company’s filing.

    Conceição works for BR4Business, a business services firm. Its two-page website provides no insight into its operations or staff. “Something great is on its way,” the top of the site’s main page reads in English. Its other page is an extensive privacy policy.

    At three of its listed Sao Paulo offices, receptionists told the AP that the company’s offices are empty and employees work remotely. Neither Conceição nor BR4Business returned multiple phone calls and emails from the AP.

    There is nothing illegal or suspect about using a company like BR4Business for legal representation, but it shows that X is doing the bare minimum to operate in the country, said Fabio de Sa e Silva, a lawyer and associate professor of International and Brazilian Studies at the University of Oklahoma.

    “It doesn’t demonstrate an intention to truly engage with the country. Take Meta, for example, and Google. They have an office, a government relations department, precisely to interact with public authorities and discuss Brazil’s regulatory policies concerning their businesses,” Silva added.

    Indeed, it is rare for an established, influential company such as X to have only a legal representative, said Carlos Affonso Souza, a lawyer and director of the Institute for Technology and Society, a Rio-based think tank. And that could be problematic going forward.

    “The concern now is what comes next and how X, once back in operation, will manage to meet the demands of the market and local authorities without creating new tensions,” he said.

    Some of Brazilian X’s users have migrated to other platforms, such as Meta’s Threads and, primarily, Bluesky. It’s unclear how many of them will return to X. In a statement to the AP, Bluesky reported that it now has 10.6 million users and continues to see strong growth in Brazil. Bluesky has appointed a legal representative in the South American country.

    Brazil was not the first country to ban X — far from it — but such a drastic step has generally been limited to authoritarian regimes. The platform and its former incarnation, Twitter, have been banned in Russia, China, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Venezuela and Turkmenistan. Other countries, such as Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt, have also temporarily suspended X before, usually to quell dissent and unrest.

    X’s dustup with Brazil has some parallels to the company’s dealings with the Indian government three years ago, back when it was still called Twitter and before Musk purchased it for $44 billion. In 2021, India threatened to arrest employees of Twitter (as well as Meta’s Facebook and WhatsApp), for not complying with the government’s requests to take down posts related to farmers’ protests that rocked the country.

    Musk’s decision to reverse course in Brazil after publicly criticizing de Moraes isn’t surprising, said Matteo Ceurvels, research firm Emarketer’s analyst for Latin America and Spain.

    “The move was pragmatic, likely driven by the economic consequences of losing access to millions of users in its third-largest market worldwide, along with the millions of dollars in associated advertising revenue,” Ceurvels said. “Although X may not be a top priority for most advertisers in Brazil, the platform needs them more than they need it.”

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    Ortutay reported from San Francisco

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  • Musk’s X skirts Brazil ban and returns to some users with change to server access

    Musk’s X skirts Brazil ban and returns to some users with change to server access

    RIO DE JANEIRO — Some Brazilian users reconnected with X on Wednesday despite the Supreme Court’s recent nationwide ban, the result of the social network apparently changing the way its servers are accessed. The reunion may be short-lived, however.

    Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered X blocked nationwide on Aug. 30 after months of tension with billionaire Elon Musk surrounding orders to take down accounts and the limits of free speech in Brazil. He also established fines on anyone using virtual private networks (VPN) to access the platform.

    That rendered X effectively inaccessible in the country until Wednesday, with AP journalists among those who had access. Experts examining X’s IP addresses said there are indications that the company has begun routing users through the servers of Cloudflare, a content delivery network, en route to its own.

    “The service that Elon Musk’s social network has started using works like a ‘digital shield’ that protects the company’s servers,” Pedro Diogenes, Latin America’s technical director for CLM, a distributor that focuses on cybersecurity. It acts as a proxy between users and X’s servers, filtering traffic and preventing the original Internet Protocol (IP) address from being recognized, Diogenes told The Associated Press.

    Brazil’s telecommunications regulator Anatel said in a statement that it is looking into the situation and will report its findings to the Supreme Court, and that there has been no change to de Moraes’ ruling. A panel of fellow justices later upheld his decision, though it hasn’t yet gone before the court’s full bench and his VPN fine in particular has faced blowback, including from the nation’s bar association.

    The Supreme Court declined to comment on possible actions it could take when contacted by the AP, and Cloudflare didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Musk, who often uses his platform to disparage de Moraes, hadn’t commented on X by late afternoon.

    Former president Jair Bolsonaro celebrated the return of the social network. He has sided with Musk in the feud with de Moraes and sought to portray the ban as censorship from an overzealous judge.

    “I congratulate you all for the pressure that makes the wheels turn in defence of democracy in Brazil,” Bolsonaro posted Wednesday on X.

    Some Brazilian X users trumpeted the platform’s return — with several addressing de Moraes directly, vowing that they weren’t using a VPN. There have been no reports of fines being levied against people using VPNs.

    Cloudflare, a security company that prides itself on providing services to websites regardless of their content, has a history of protecting sites other companies won’t touch. But only to a point. In 2017, for instance, it dropped the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer as a customer following a deadly clash at a white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. And in 2022, it dropped the notorious stalking and harassment site Kiwi Farms citing an “immediate threat to human life.”

    But X is a mainstream social media platform – even if it may be home to some extremist content – and it is not yet clear whether Brazil’s ban would be enough for San Francisco, California-based Cloudflare to abandon it.

    Cloudflare has a reputation for cooperating with governments, however, and so may comply with an order from the Supreme Court to cease serving as X’s proxy, David Nemer, who specializes in the anthropology of technology at the University of Virginia, told the AP.

    Ordering internet service providers to block Cloudflare would be impossible, since thousands of Brazilian companies depend on it, Nemer previously wrote on Bluesky, another social media platform.

    De Moraes could also attempt to force Musk’s hand by going after his satellite-based internet service provider Starlink, as he has done since the ban, said Rafael Mafei, a law professor at the University of Sao Paulo.

    Last Friday, de Moraes seized about $3 million from bank accounts belonging to X and Starlink to collect what X owed in fines.

    Legal analysts have questioned de Moraes’ prior decision to freeze Starlink’s bank account until it paid for X’s fines. While Musk owns both X and SpaceX, which operates Starlink, the two companies are separate entities. But de Moraes has shown that he considers the two companies to belong to the same economic group, Mafei said.

    “Under normal circumstances, anyone else who openly took active steps to obstruct judicial measures and investigations, as Musk is doing, would possibly have already had their arrest decreed in Brazil,” Mafei said.

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    Ortutay reported from San Francisco.

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  • One Tech Tip: Ever wanted to quit Elon Musk’s X platform? Here’s how you can do it

    One Tech Tip: Ever wanted to quit Elon Musk’s X platform? Here’s how you can do it

    LONDON — Since Elon Musk acquired Twitter, renamed it X, fired much of its staff and made other big changes, a steady stream of celebrities, public figures, organizations and ordinary people have quit the social media platform.

    Some blame Musk for turning a place that used to be fun into one that’s chaotic and toxic, pointing to moves like allowing polarizing figures such as Donald Trump back in. Others are turned off by Musk’s juvenile humor or by how he’s increasingly barging into their feeds with his posts, often to amplify far-right tropes.

    They’re defecting to rival sites like BlueSky, Mastodon, Meta’s Threads, and Reddit. Some even are — gasp — quitting social media altogether.

    So if you’ve decided it’s time to exit X, here’s what you need to do:

    Begin by deactivating your account, which starts a 30-day countdown until your account is deleted permanently. Go to settings and privacy, then to the Account tab and click Deactivate your Account, enter your password and confirm you want to proceed.

    Once you go ahead, your profile and username will be hidden from public view. If you change your mind, you can stop the process by logging in at any point during the 30-day period.

    If you’ve signed up for a subscription, like a premium account, cancel that if you don’t want to make another payment. Subscriptions are only automatically canceled when the account is deleted.

    If your account somehow gets reactivated even though you didn’t want to, X says on its help pages that it might be because you’ve granted access to third-party apps. These are built by other software developers and can do things like read and make posts or access direct messages on your behalf.

    To see which third-party apps you’ve given access to, head to the settings menu, then Security and Account Access. Click Apps and Sessions, and then Connected Apps. You can revoke access to individual apps by tapping or clicking on each one.

    If you suspect that a rogue app still has access to your account, try changing your password for X.

    Before you leave for good, you can download an archive of all your data from your time on Twitter and X. It could be useful if you want to look up a memorable post you wrote, refer back to direct messages you traded with other users, or find the accounts that you followed or were following you.

    In the settings menu, you’ll need to enter your password to request the data, which will come in a zip file. When I requested my archive, which amounted to 211 megabytes of data, it was available to download about 24 hours later.

    What happens to that data once you’re gone for good? X says on its privacy page that it keeps users’ profile information and content “for the duration of your account.” It holds on to other “personally identifiable data” for up to 18 months, without being more specific on what that data is.

    It has become a ritual for X users to announce they’re departing the platform. Politicians and celebrities have used their final post to take a parting shot at Musk, warn that the site is becoming too toxic, or let their followers know about the other social media venues they’re using. Then, their statements usually disappear because their account is deleted.

    Users who aren’t famous have drafted heartfelt farewell letters, on X, their blogs or platforms like LinkedIn, explaining their reasons for leaving. It’s not necessary, though it might help you achieve closure.

    Are you sure you want to leave, permanently? If you’re not ready to commit to full deletion, you could instead lock down your account.

    Go to the privacy section in your settings, then click on Your posts and then tick the boxes to protect your posts and videos.

    Protecting your posts means that only people who follow you already will be able to see them. Any other users will see a padlock. If they try to follow you, you’ll get a notification requesting access.

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    Is there a tech challenge you need help figuring out? Write to us at onetechtip@ap.org with your questions.

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  • With Musk’s X banned in Brazil, its users carve out new digital homes

    With Musk’s X banned in Brazil, its users carve out new digital homes

    RIO DE JANEIRO — As billionaire Elon Musk’s clash with a Brazilian Supreme Court justice came to a head last week, there were legal twists, insults, ultimatums, defiance and then, finally, capitulation. When the digital dust settled, X had become an ex.

    Musk’s social media platform was banned nationwide and Justice Alexandre de Moraes set a whopping $9,000 daily fine for anyone using a virtual private network (VPN) to skirt the suspension. Brazil’s X users, left casting about for a new platform, mostly started washing up on Threads and Bluesky.

    “Hello literally everyone in Brazil,” Shauna Wright posted on Threads the day de Moraes ordered X’s suspension.

    Everyone hadn’t been on X; Brazil’s social masses are primarily on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. But X had outsize influence in terms of newsmakers, agenda setting and thought leaders. It was the local battleground of the global culture war and the peanut gallery for soccer games and reality shows, especially Big Brother. So as X went dark in this highly online country of 213 million, its users started migrating.

    Wright’s post was an in-joke for fellow former employees of the company then known as Twitter, and an homage to its award-winning post when Meta’s Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp all went down in 2021, sending users flocking to Twitter for info. But Wright also intended her throwback as a genuine greeting to all the friendly Brazilians.

    “It took off even among those who didn’t get the reference, but they didn’t have to!” Wright, a content designer who posts as “goldengateblond”, told the Associated Press from San Francisco. “I was glad it made people feel welcome.”

    Meta launched Threads last year amid widespread backlash to Musk’s 2022 purchase of Twitter and his upending many of its policies and features — from content moderation to its user verification system.

    Opening a Threads account was seamless for Instagram users, so it scaled rapidly; it had 175 million monthly users globally as of July, Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced. Meta declined to provide specifics on Brazilian users.

    More Brazilians went to Bluesky, a lesser-known platform that not only looks and feels very much like the former Twitter, but also grew out of it. The pet project of former CEO Jack Dorsey was supposed to replace it eventually. Whether it can remains to be seen, but Brazilians have started doing their part. Bluesky gained 2.6 million users since last week, 85% from Brazil, the company said Wednesday, boosting its total to over 8 million.

    “Good morning everyone,” Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva posted Sunday on Bluesky and Threads. “What do you think of it here?”

    “Our mental health is already showing signs of improvement,” Tatiane Queiroz, 43, replied on Bluesky, where she describes herself as a “Twitter refugee in Mato Grosso,” a state in Brazilian farm country.

    Bluesky has been posting in Portuguese to get Brazilians situated and find those with whom they previously shared connections. They celebrated Wednesday as TV network Globo’s evening news program, which gets over 20 million viewers, presented its new Bluesky account on air. Pioneers with prior footholds are giving tips and sharing so-called “starter packs” of accounts to follow.

    Jefferson Nascimento, a human rights lawyer in Sao Paulo, has created 10 starter packs to help newbies navigate.

    “In some way, to strengthen the environment, make the environment more favorable for other people to go there, so that when Twitter (X) comes back — if it does come back at some point — there isn’t a mass stampede again,” said Nascimento, 42, whose follower count on X was 135,000, more than triple his Bluesky amount.

    Some compared Bluesky to the halcyon days of early-2010s Twitter. Egerton Neto, 30, opened his Bluesky account on the day of X’s shutdown. He has just 8 followers — far below his 252 on X — but appreciates Bluesky’s more peaceful discourse and less intentional addictiveness. He said by phone from Recife that he also likes seeing its developers interact with the community as they build the platform.

    Starting over from scratch online is a bit of déjà vu for Brazilians — at least millenials. They were early adopters of Google’s former social network Orkut and dominated the platform before its 2014 shutdown. They migrated en masse to Facebook.

    Bluesky’s CEO Jay Graber told the AP on Monday that this wave of Brazilians underscores one of its missions: allowing users to move platforms and keep connections, similar to switching cell phone carriers without losing your number or contacts.

    On established social networks like TikTok or Facebook, users can only interact with people on the same platform. There’s no interoperability. Big Tech companies have largely built moats around their online properties, which helps serve their advertising-focused business models. Bluesky is building the technical foundation — what it calls “a protocol for public conversation” — that could make networks work more like email, blogs or phone numbers.

    “The situation users are in today is a bit of a trap because users are locked in and developers are locked out of these social platforms. And then that means that you’re essentially stuck in a place where it should be offering you a service, but now it’s owning your entire social life,” Graber said. “One of the fundamental things we believe is that a user’s social relationships, like their social graph, their connections to their friends, should be something that they own.”

    X had 22 million users in Brazil, according to estimates in the Digital 2024: Brazil report, just one-sixth the number on Instagram, and about one-fifth of Facebook or TikTok. But skimpy figures bely its importance as a gathering place for journalists, politicians, academics and celebrities whose interactions resounded far beyond, according to David Nemer, who specializes in the anthropology of technology at the University of Virginia.

    “Even though Twitter may not have this direct impact on the everyday, common Brazilians, it would impact the press, which eventually would impact indirectly common Brazilians,” said Nemer, who is Brazilian. “That’s the sort of impact that Twitter has — or used to have — in Brazil.”

    According to data from research firm Similarweb, X was Brazil’s fourth-most downloaded social media app from the Google Play store the day before its suspension; Bluesky has since surpassed it. On Apple’s app store, Bluesky became the top downloaded app of any type, social media or otherwise. Bluesky saw daily active Brazilian users reach 3.4 million on Aug. 30, the day de Moraes ordered the shutdown, versus X’s 6.1 million that day.

    Similarweb data also showed many Brazilians using VPNs to stay on X. Nemer said that from his home in Charlottesville he has seen some far-right politicians brazenly posting and defying Brazil’s Supreme Court to levy its exorbitant fine.

    But most Brazilians have gone, and there were those on X lamenting their departure.

    “Losing Brazil is like ‘Sex and the City’ losing Samantha. You’re losing all the best one-liners and the sexual energy that makes the platform/show tick,” posted Sam Stryker, who until 2022 oversaw Twitter’s global branded entertainment channels — even operating Twitter’s Twitter account.

    And Brazilian X users who emigrated were settling into their new digital abodes, like columnist and internet personality Chico Barney.

    “Bluesky as a post-Twitter refuge proving once and for all that it doesn’t matter the place, but the people,” he wrote Wednesday.

    ___

    Ortutay reported from San Francisco

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  • How one Brazilian judge could suspend Musk’s X in the coming hours

    How one Brazilian judge could suspend Musk’s X in the coming hours

    SAO PAULO — It’s a showdown between the world’s richest man and a Brazilian Supreme Court justice.

    The justice, Alexandre de Moraes, has threatened to suspend social media giant X nationwide if its billionaire owner Elon Musk doesn’t swiftly comply with one of his orders. Musk has responded with insults, including calling de Moraes a “tyrant” and “a dictator.”

    It is the latest chapter in the monthslong feud between the two men over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation. Many in Brazil are waiting and watching to see if either man will blink.

    Earlier this month, X removed its legal representative from Brazil on the grounds that de Moraes had threatened her with arrest. On Wednesday night at 8:07 p.m. local time (7:07 p.m. Eastern Standard Time), de Moraes gave the platform 24 hours to appoint a new representative, or face a shutdown until his order is met.

    De Moraes’ order is based on Brazilian law requiring foreign companies to have legal representation to operate in the country, according to the Supreme Court’s press office. This ensures someone can be notified of legal decisions and is qualified to take any requisite action.

    X’s refusal to appoint a legal representative would be particularly problematic ahead of Brazil’s October municipal elections, with a churn of fake news expected, said Luca Belli, coordinator of the Technology and Society Center at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a university in Rio de Janeiro. Takedown orders are common during campaigns, and not having someone to receive legal notices would make timely compliance impossible.

    “Until last week, 10 days ago, there was an office here, so this problem didn’t exist. Now there’s nothing. Look at the example of Telegram: Telegram doesn’t have an office here, it has about 50 employees in the whole world. But it has a legal representative,” Belli, who is also a professor at the university’s law school, told The Associated Press.

    Any Brazilian judge has the authority to enforce compliance with decisions. Such measures can range from lenient actions like fines to more severe penalties, such as suspension, said Carlos Affonso Souza, a lawyer and director of the Institute for Technology and Society, a Rio-based think tank.

    Lone Brazilian judges shut down Meta’s WhatsApp, the nation’s most widely used messaging app, several times in 2015 and 2016 due to the company’s refusal to comply with police requests for user data. In 2022, de Moraes threatened the messaging app Telegram with a nationwide shutdown, arguing it had repeatedly ignored Brazilian authorities’ requests to block profiles and provide information. He ordered Telegram to appoint a local representative; the company ultimately complied and stayed online.

    Affonso Souza added that an individual judge’s ruling to shut down a platform with so many users would likely be assessed at a later date by the Supreme Court’s full bench.

    De Moraes would first notify the nation’s telecommunications regulator, Anatel, who would then instruct operators — including Musk’s own Starlink internet service provider — to suspend users’ access to X. That includes preventing the resolution of X’s website — the term for conversion of a domain name to an IP address — and blocking access to the IP address of X’s servers from inside Brazilian territory, according to Belli.

    Given that operators are aware of the widely publicized standoff and their obligation to comply with an order from de Moraes, plus the fact doing so isn’t complicated, X could be offline in Brazil as early as 12 hours after receiving their instructions, Belli said.

    Since X is widely accessed via mobile phones, de Moraes is also likely to notify major app stores to stop offering X in Brazil, said Affonso Souza. Another possible — but highly controversial — step would be prohibiting access with virtual private networks ( VPNs) and imposing fines on those who use them to access X, he added.

    X and its former incarnation, Twitter, are banned in several countries — mostly authoritarian regimes such as Russia, China, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Venezuela and Turkmenistan.

    China banned X when it was still called Twitter back in 2009, along with Facebook. In Russia, authorities expanded their crackdown on dissent and free media after Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. They have blocked multiple independent Russian-language media outlets critical of the Kremlin, and cut access to Twitter, which later became X, as well as Meta’s Facebook and Instagram.

    In 2009, Twitter became an essential communications tool in Iran after the country’s government cracked down on traditional media after a disputed presidential election. Tech-savvy Iranians took to Twitter to organize protests. The government subsequently banned the platform, along with Facebook.

    Other countries, such as Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt, have also temporarily suspended X before, usually to quell dissent and unrest. Twitter was banned in Egypt after the Arab Spring uprisings, which some dubbed the “Twitter revolution,” but it has since been restored.

    Brazil is a key market for X and other platforms. Some 40 million Brazilians, roughly one-fifth of the population, access X at least once per month, according to the market research group Emarketer. Musk, a self-described “free speech absolutist,” has claimed de Moraes’ actions amount to censorship and rallied support from Brazil’s political right. He has also said that he wants his platform to be a “global town square” where information flows freely. The loss of the Brazilian market — the world’s fourth-biggest democracy — would make achieving this goal more difficult.

    Brazil is also a potentially huge growth market for Musk’s satellite company, Starlink, given its vast territory and spotty internet service in far-flung areas.

    Late Thursday afternoon, Starlink said on X that de Moraes this week froze its finances, preventing it from doing any transactions in the country where it has more than 250,000 customers.

    “This order is based on an unfounded determination that Starlink should be responsible for the fines levied — unconstitutionally — against X. It was issued in secret and without affording Starlink any of the due process of law guaranteed by the Constitution of Brazil. We intend to address the matter legally,” Starlink said in its statement.

    Musk replied to people sharing the earlier reports of the freeze, adding his own insults directed at de Moraes.

    “This guy @Alexandre is an outright criminal of the worst kind, masquerading as a judge,” he wrote.

    De Moraes’ defenders have said his actions have been lawful, supported by most of the court’s full bench and have served to protect democracy at a time in which it is imperiled.

    In April, de Moraes included Musk as a target in an ongoing investigation over the dissemination of fake news and opened a separate investigation into the executive for alleged obstruction.

    X said Thursday in a statement that it expects its service to be shutdown in Brazil.

    “Unlike other social media and technology platforms, we will not comply in secret with illegal orders,” it said. “To our users in Brazil and around the world, X remains committed to protecting your freedom of speech.”

    It also said de Moraes’ colleagues on the Supreme Court “are either unwilling or unable to stand up to him.”

    ___

    Biller reported from Rio and Ortutay from Oakland, California.

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  • Brazil blocks Musk’s X after company refuses to name local representative amid feud with judge

    Brazil blocks Musk’s X after company refuses to name local representative amid feud with judge

    SAO PAULO — Brazil started blocking Elon Musk’s social media platform X early Saturday, making it largely inaccessible on both the web and through its mobile app after the company refused to comply with a judge’s order.

    X missed a deadline imposed by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes to name a legal representative in Brazil, triggering the suspension. It marks an escalation in the monthslong feud between Musk and de Moraes over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation.

    To block X, Brazil’s telecommunications regulator, Anatel, told internet service providers to suspend users’ access to the social media platform. As of Saturday at midnight local time, major operators began doing so.

    De Moraes had warned Musk on Wednesday night that X could be blocked in Brazil if he failed to comply with his order to name a representative, and established a 24-hour deadline. The company hasn’t had a representative in the country since earlier this month.

    “Elon Musk showed his total disrespect for Brazilian sovereignty and, in particular, for the judiciary, setting himself up as a true supranational entity and immune to the laws of each country,” de Moraes wrote in his decision on Friday.

    The justice said the platform will stay suspended until it complies with his orders, and also set a daily fine of 50,000 reais ($8,900) for people or companies using VPNs to access it.

    In a later ruling, he backtracked on his initial decision to establish a 5-day deadline for internet service providers themselves — and not just the telecommunications regulator — to block access to X, as well as his directive for app stores to remove virtual private networks, or VPNs.

    The dispute also led to the freezing this week of the bank accounts in Brazil of Musk’s satellite internet provider Starlink.

    Brazil is one of the biggest markets for X, which has struggled with the loss of advertisers since Musk purchased the former Twitter in 2022. Market research group Emarketer says some 40 million Brazilians, roughly one-fifth of the population, access X at least once per month.

    “This is a sad day for X users around the world, especially those in Brazil, who are being denied access to our platform. I wish it did not have to come to this – it breaks my heart,” X’s CEO Linda Yaccarino said Friday night, adding that Brazil is failing to uphold its constitution’s pledge to forbid censorship.

    X had posted on its official Global Government Affairs page late Thursday that it expected X to be shut down by de Moraes, “simply because we would not comply with his illegal orders to censor his political opponents.”

    “When we attempted to defend ourselves in court, Judge de Moraes threatened our Brazilian legal representative with imprisonment. Even after she resigned, he froze all of her bank accounts,” the company wrote.

    X has clashed with de Moraes over its reluctance to comply with orders to block users.

    Accounts that the platform previously has shut down on Brazilian orders include lawmakers affiliated with former President Jair Bolsonaro’s right-wing party and activists accused of undermining Brazilian democracy. X’s lawyers in April sent a document to the Supreme Court in April, saying that since 2019 it had suspended or blocked 226 users.

    In his decision Friday, de Moraes’ cited Musk’s statements as evidence that X’s conduct “clearly intends to continue to encourage posts with extremism, hate speech and anti-democratic discourse, and to try to withdraw them from jurisdictional control.”

    In April, de Moraes included Musk as a target in an ongoing investigation over the dissemination of fake news and opened a separate investigation into the executive for alleged obstruction.

    Musk, a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist,” has repeatedly claimed the justice’s actions amount to censorship, and his argument has been echoed by Brazil’s political right. He has often insulted de Moraes on his platform, characterizing him as a dictator and tyrant.

    De Moraes’ defenders have said his actions aimed at X have been lawful, supported by most of the court’s full bench and have served to protect democracy at a time it is imperiled. He wrote Friday that his ruling is based on Brazilian law requiring internet services companies to have representation in the country so they can be notified when there are relevant court decisions and take requisite action — specifying the takedown of illicit content posted by users, and an anticipated churn of misinformation during October municipal elections.

    The looming shutdown is not unprecedented in Brazil.

    Lone Brazilian judges shut down Meta’s WhatsApp, the nation’s most widely used messaging app, several times in 2015 and 2016 due to the company’s refusal to comply with police requests for user data. In 2022, de Moraes threatened the messaging app Telegram with a nationwide shutdown, arguing it had repeatedly ignored Brazilian authorities’ requests to block profiles and provide information. He ordered Telegram to appoint a local representative; the company ultimately complied and stayed online.

    X and its former incarnation, Twitter, have been banned in several countries — mostly authoritarian regimes such as Russia, China, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Venezuela and Turkmenistan. Other countries, such as Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt, have also temporarily suspended X before, usually to quell dissent and unrest. Twitter was banned in Egypt after the Arab Spring uprisings, which some dubbed the “Twitter revolution,” but it has since been restored.

    A search Friday on X showed hundreds of Brazilian users inquiring about VPNs that could potentially enable them to continue using the platform by making it appear they were logging on from outside the country. It was not immediately clear how Brazilian authorities would police this practice and impose fines cited by de Moraes.

    “This is an unusual measure, but its main objective is to ensure that the court order to suspend the platform’s operation is, in fact, effective,” Filipe Medon, a specialist in digital law and professor at the law school of Getulio Vargas Foundation, a university in Rio de Janeiro, told The Associated Press.

    Mariana de Souza Alves Lima, known by her handle MariMoon, showed her 1.4 million followers on X where she intends to go, posting a screenshot of rival social network BlueSky.

    On Thursday evening, Starlink, said on X that de Moraes this week froze its finances, preventing it from doing any transactions in the country where it has more than 250,000 customers.

    “This order is based on an unfounded determination that Starlink should be responsible for the fines levied—unconstitutionally—against X. It was issued in secret and without affording Starlink any of the due process of law guaranteed by the Constitution of Brazil. We intend to address the matter legally,” Starlink said in its statement. The law firm representing Starlink told the AP that the company appealed, but wouldn’t make further comment.

    Musk replied to people sharing the reports of the freeze, adding insults directed at de Moraes. “This guy @Alexandre is an outright criminal of the worst kind, masquerading as a judge,” he wrote.

    Musk later posted on X that SpaceX, which runs Starlink, will provide free internet service in Brazil “until the matter is resolved” since “we cannot receive payment, but don’t want to cut anyone off.”

    In his decision, de Moraes said he ordered the freezing of Starlink’s assets, as X didn’t have enough money in its accounts to cover mounting fines, and reasoning that the two companies are part of the same economic group.

    While ordering X’s suspension followed warnings and fines and so was appropriate, taking action against Starlink seems “highly questionable,” said Luca Belli, coordinator of the Getulio Vargas Foundation’s Technology and Society Center.

    “Yes, of course, they have the same owner, Elon Musk, but it is discretionary to consider Starlink as part of the same economic group as Twitter (X). They have no connection, they have no integration,” Belli said.

    ___

    AP writers Barbara Ortutay reported from San Francisco and David Biller from Rio. Savarese contributed from Sao Paulo.

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