FILE PHOTO: Brazil's Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes attends an event where he received a tribute by the Public Ministry of Sao Paulo, after the Brazilian Supreme Court ordered an immediate suspension of social media platform X in the country, in Sao Paulo, Brazil August 30, 2024. REUTERS/Carla Carniel/File Photo
SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazilians are split over Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes' order for social media giant X to be taken down in the country, a poll shows.
A slight majority of those surveyed say the judge is right in his feud with billionaire X owner Elon Musk, but user-targeted fines on VPNs and the freezing of Starlink accounts in the country were seen as "abusive".
Pollster AtlasIntel said that 50.9% of the respondents surveyed on Sept. 3-4 disagreed with Moraes' decision to suspend the platform in the country, while 48.1% agreed and 0.9% did not know how to answer.
Asked about who was right on the public dispute between Moraes and Musk, however, 49.7% sided with the judge while 43.9% backed the billionaire. 5.4% chose not to take sides.
Moraes and Musk have been feuding for months over legal orders for X to take down some content, and matters escalated after X failed to name a local legal representative as required by Brazilian law and ignored a deadline for compliance with court orders.
According to AtlasIntel, 48.9% of respondents said X should have complied with court orders to take down some content and ban some users implicated in probes of so-called "digital militias" accused of spreading distorted news and hate.
That was considerably higher than the 37.6% that sided with Musk in saying that the social media platform should not have respected Moares' rulings. 9.9% said X should have taken down some specific content, but not banned any users.
Moraes' decision to impose a 50,000 reais ($8,860) fine on any user that uses alternatives such as VPNs to access X after its suspension was unpopular, according to the poll, with 64.5% standing against the move.
Asked about the judge's decision to block financial accounts from Starlink - whose parent SpaceX is 40% owned by Musk - in Brazil, 55.1% said that the ruling is "abusive," while 44% think it was "justified".
Brazil is X's sixth-biggest market globally with about 21.5 million users as of April, according to Statista.
X was taken down for most Brazilians in the early hours of Saturday.
The poll interviewed 1,617 Brazilians and had a margin of error of 2 percentage points plus or minus. AtlasIntel polls people on trending topics sometimes and this survey was not commissioned or paid for by any public party.
($1 = 5.6429 reais)
(Reporting by Luana Maria Benedito and Eduardo Simoes; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
