SAO PAULO (Reuters) -Media platform X said on Saturday it would close its operations in Brazil "effective immediately" due to what it called "censorship orders" by Brazilian judge Alexandre de Moraes. X, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, claims Moraes secretly threatened one of the company's legal representatives in the South American country with arrest if it did not comply with legal orders to take down some content from its platform. The social media giant published pictures of a document allegedly signed by Moraes which says a daily fine of 20,000 reais ($3,653) and an arrest decree would be imposed against X representative Rachel Nova Conceicao if the platform did not fully comply to Moraes' orders.
Does this harm twitter in any way?
I mean, if they are still reachable and usable in Brazil, they can still serve ads to those users and so it seems their business doesnt change much?
But there must have been some advantage for twitter in having an office there, otherwise they wouldnt have opened it in the first place.
They can’t sell Brazilian ads to Brazilians, as that needs an office/presence in Brazil. This hurts the value of ads that Xitter can charge when dealing with users in Brazil (Brazil is the largest economy in South America, and with Xitter already having ad money problems, it isn’t a good thing for them.)
So while they could still show ads to Brazilians, the fact is it would be for companies with offices outside Brazil, something not many would care about.