Brazilians seek out social-media alternatives after ban on Elon Musk’s X

After Brazil’s Supreme Court shut down the social-media platform on Saturday, Brazilians were migrating to other apps in Latin America’s biggest nation, which has one of the world’s most active online populations.

Camila Rezende, a 39-year-old in Brasília, joined hundreds of thousands of Brazilians in signing up for social-media platform Bluesky, an app that resembles X, formerly Twitter. Others joined Threads, an X rival owned by Facebook’s parent company, Meta.

After joining Twitter in 2009, Rezende said she used to spend hours a day on the site, where she met some of her closest friends and got most of her news. “I used to live there," she said.

But after Brazil’s presidential election in 2022, Rezende said she found the site became full of fake news and bots. And she didn’t like the changes implemented by Musk after he purchased the platform that same year, including having to pay for a verified account.

“It became a network of older people and preteens talking nonsense and conspiracy theories," she said. “I have a new home, without the defects of the previous one for now."

Still, Rezende said she felt nostalgic when she heard that the high court had outlawed a site that had been so important to her life. “We even did a countdown to the ban," she said, describing how she and her friends watched X’s downfall unfold.

Other Brazilians saw the court’s move as undemocratic. “I see it as authoritarianism," said Caroline Devanie, a 36-year-old advertiser in Brasília, pointing to other countries that also ban X such as China, Iran and North Korea. “Those are dictatorships and not democracies."

The ban took effect as of 12:01 a.m. Saturday after months of squabbling between Musk and Brazil’s highest court. A five-member panel of the Supreme Court will review the ban on Monday, deciding to either maintain it or throw out the decision.

The dispute in Brazil comes amid growing tensions between social-media companies and governments worldwide.

In the U.S., President Biden signed a law in April that requires TikTok’s Beijing-based owner, ByteDance, to sell the platform in a year or face being banned over concerns that the Chinese government could access user data. France last week detained and charged the founder of the popular Telegram messaging app, Pavel Durov, over accusations he failed to counter the spread of illegal content on the app. Venezuela’s autocratic regime cut access to X last month after a public spat between Musk and President Nicolás Maduro, who had claimed to win re-election in a presidential vote widely seen as fraudulent.

In Brazil, authorities have been clamping down on social-media and messaging platforms since supporters of former President Jair Bolsonarostormed Congress and other buildings in the capital in January 2023 in an attack President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva described as a coup attempt.

In April, Supreme Court JusticeAlexandre de Moraes ordered X to take down several accounts deemed to be spreading hate speech and deliberately misleading information. Musk initially balked at the order and closed X’s offices in Brazil. The court issued an ultimatum last week: either appoint a legal representative in Brazil or face a ban, which took effect after Musk didn’t respond.

Luiz Augusto D’Urso, a Brazilian lawyer specializing in digital law, said the country’s legislation isn’t clear on what constitutes spreading intentionally false information, often called disinformation. But he said companies must comply with court decisions.

“If someone believes that the court decision is wrong, they can appeal, but they cannot choose not to comply with them," he said.

Some have said de Moraes, who has called X “a lawless land," has gone too far. Musk, a self-proclaimed free-speech absolutist, lashed out against de Moraes over the weekend, calling him “the dictator of Brazil." Many in Brazil’s political right have accused the Supreme Court and da Silva’s left-wing government of trying to silence conservatives ahead of municipal elections next month.

Opposition politicians stepped up calls for impeaching de Moraes, while others compared the ban on X to measures that would be used in countries such as North Korea and Cuba, not in one of the world’s largest democracies. Lawmaker Nikolas Ferreira said he would risk the nearly $9,000 daily fine for using VPN technology to circumvent the ban and access X.

“I won’t back down…Tyranny won’t prevail," Ferreira wrote on X shortly after the ban took effect. Later, he asked: “Anyone from Brazil still here?"

A prolonged ban on X would be a blow to the platform, cutting it off from the nation of some 203 million people and its sixth-largest market, said Viktor Chagas, a professor at Brazil’s Fluminense Federal University, where he studies social media. Brazilians spend on average about nine hours and 32 minutes online every day, the second highest rate in the world after South Africa, according to data compiled by website Proxyrack. Brazilians are avid social media users, signing up for more than eight social-media accounts on average.

Many users unable to access X are now signing up for Bluesky. Since Saturday, around a million Brazilians have signed up for Bluesky, equivalent to about one-sixth of the platform’s total users before the ban, Chagas said.

He said X was the 10th most used platform in Brazil but one of the most politically important.

“Twitter was never the most used platform in Brazil, but it is far from being an irrelevant one," he said. “It had a great political importance due to its visibility for real-time events, news coverage and social activism."

Some Brazilians appear to be using a VPN to access X, but not a significant amount, said Chagas.

Leonardo Oliveira, a 39-year-old in São Paulo who signed up for Bluesky over the weekend, said it has been strange to go without X. He began using the app in 2007, mainly to keep up-to-date on current events.

“I found it very odd to not have X after midnight," said Oliveira. “I realize how dependent I was on that platform and how much I used it out of habit and addiction, not necessarily out of necessity."

Still, Oliveira said he supports the court’s decision to ban X, a move that has divided the country among ideological lines.

“If it’s easy for other companies to comply with Brazilian regulations, X should also do so," he said. “It’s about respecting the norms in place in the country."

Priscilla Oliveira and Kejal Vyas contributed to this article.

Write to Ryan at Ryan.Dube@wsj.com.