For years, Twitter was the go-to social network among journalists in Brazil. After Elon Musk bought it and rebranded it as X, it remained influential—though more ambiguously.
Many journalists often complained about irrrelevant or unwanted content on the platform. X, they said, had become filled with hate speech and far-right messages, meaning their posts no longer reached audiences like before.
All of this changed in the early hours of Saturday (Aug. 31). At midnight, following an order from Supreme Federal Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, Brazilian internet service providers blocked access to the platform.
The decision followed a months-long feud between Musk and the judge.
Moraes says the platform has violated a law requiring foreign companies to have legal representation to operate in Brazil, after X removed all its staff from the country last month. Musk, on the other hand, says Moraes promotes censorship and is an “evil tyrant.”
Initially, the order also included a ban on VPNs. After strong negative reactions, the judge partially walked back this decision. Even so, a daily fine of R$50,000 (US $ 8,750) remains in place for those using the tool to access X in Brazil.
On Monday, the Supreme Court's First Panel unanimously confirmed the blocking of X with a 5-0 vote.
Many journalists continue to use Twitter but say it become unpleasant, toxic and rife with hate speech and misinformation.
LatAm Journalism Review (LJR) spoke with more than a dozen Brazilian journalists to understand how the block is impacting them and their work.
The following accounts, edited for brevity and clarity, range from relief to regret, and appear in the chronological order of the interviews.
I used to be a heavy user, but it consumed too much time, so I had already reduced my usage. Since June, I hadn't logged in, and my life improved. On Friday, I logged in to say goodbye, to get one last shot of dopamine, and to have a final spat.
I don't think the block will affect me. As for journalism, the press has become addicted to an easy audience: any quote, any argument, turns into a story. Social media in general, and Twitter in particular, have contributed to a decline in press quality.
Those working in international journalism might face challenges. When an authority uses the platform to communicate, there could indeed be obstacles, but there's always a way to circumvent that.
Maybe it’ll take a little longer, but we need to question that urgency. Our job isn't like that of doctors, where immediacy could save lives. Much of the urgency in digital journalism doesn’t stem from a real necessity.
If something that could be accessible in five minutes takes an hour or two, that's fine. The world won't end.
X is the first social media button on my browser. For me, it was always just a matter of opening the browser, clicking, and instantly knowing what was happening.
Since the block, I've often had that feeling of opening the fridge and finding nothing you want—a feeling of eternal longing, as if I were missing something.
I used it to promote my work and stay updated on trending topics. I also conducted fact-checks there, with dates readily accessible.
I'm on Bluesky now, but there are no trending topics, and for work, it's not very useful.
Twitter had been declining for a long time. It got worse before Musk bought it. Afterward, the moderation ended, and posts I would never have seen out of personal interest, mainly from the far-right, started showing up.
Twitter was, by nature, the main platform for public debate in Brazil. The most important people for decision-making in Brazil were there, including many authorities, journalists, academics, and activists.
This enabled a more qualified debate than on other networks and allowed us to follow the most important movements and discover story ideas.
I used the platform daily, several times a day. I frequently used the list function: I had a list of senators, one of the Workers Party (center-left) bench, one of the Liberal Party (right) bench, and so on. You can filter well how people are positioning themselves, who is saying what. If I needed to hear both sides, I quickly found who was most engaged in the topic and reached out to those people.
I've caught myself several times clicking in vain on the app. I even joined Bluesky but didn't find a perfect substitute. For now, there's a gap in coverage that I don't know how to fill.
I used it extensively, and it was a very important tool for my work, not just to cover Brazil but also Latin America.
I also used it to follow national and regional public conversations and to connect with sources. Reestablishing the same network will be very difficult.
We already know that not everyone from X migrated to Bluesky—some went there, others to LinkedIn, etc. The suspension complicates our work and disconnects Brazil from the international public conversation happening on the platform.
I used it daily, several times a day. It was always a screen that I had open almost all the time; sometimes I closed it, but soon I’d reopen it. I think I used it too much and it was a distraction.
Without commenting on the merits of the Supreme Court's decision, I think the block significantly harms our work. I use it a lot to find stories. Often, the political debate happens on the platform, and Twitter or X has always been the most politicized of all networks. There, deputies or senators are debating, supporting each other, sometimes even insulting each other, and that's news.
There's also a lot of hate speech or hysterical speech there. The absence of that might have some positive effect, but overall, the loss from the suspension is much greater than any potential benefit.
For a few years now, I haven't been a heavy user.
I think some of the consequences of the block will become clearer over time and haven't been well understood yet. Even with limitations, Twitter was widely used for social media monitoring, not just by journalists and academics but also by other human rights organizations.
It was an important source for identifying reports of armed violence conflicts, for example. Even if the decision is reversed at some point, there will be impacts, and not all of them are obvious.
Initially, I used Twitter a lot to contact sources and promote stories. Currently, I use Instagram much more.
After Musk took over, it got much worse. We lost the verified badge, and now there are many profiles with the badge that we don't know if they're fake or not, often anonymous, with tens of thousands of followers. My reach also dropped significantly, and sometimes out of nowhere I lost a thousand or two thousand followers.
I'm not sure if Twitter was more of a hindrance than a help because it amplified attack messages a lot, and disinformation ran rampant. It became a lawless land, where everything was ignored and allowed, as if all countries followed U.S. law.
This year, I was threatened in a hate campaign that started on X, and the profiles that did this weren't even punished. Staying there became a challenge because it was necessary to live within the sewage.
Twitter is a very important source of investigation and information for those working with international politics. Many heads of state and authorities speak on X before issuing other official statements. Many breaking news stories come from the platform. Without it, we're left in the dark, and investigations become much more complicated.
Without X, we also lose a channel that helped our stories reach an audience that consumes news through the platform, as we always replicated the news there. The platform's purpose of serving as a digital public square fueled conversation about the stories. Even if there were critics, that is part of the game too.
I’m finding it good not to be there anymore. Twitter was an asylum, and Bluesky is similar. I’m posting there and getting a lot of traction.
For work, you can manage without it: what circulated there can be found elsewhere. For the podcast, it was good for finding video clips, but I’ll find them elsewhere.
Overall, I’m finding it good for my mental health. Twitter was already bad before Musk, and then it got worse. My life is better without the anxiety of constantly seeing what’s happening.
I don’t think it will affect journalism or my work at all. Twitter was still very relevant for spreading disinformation, but its journalistic utility and reach had already declined significantly.
There was a coincidence with the block: at Núcleo, we were planning to announce the closure of our Twitter page this week. They blocked it on Friday, and we were going to announce the closure on Wednesday (September 3).
We don’t want to invest in this platform anymore, not just because of reach and investment, but also for moral reasons. It was a platform that no longer valued information but rather the spread of ideas that could be hate speech. So we didn’t want to be there for both professional and moral reasons.
There are other channels for promotion. Google is much more important. There’s also Threads, LinkedIn, and Bluesky.
