CNN
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Brazil’s Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes fined the messaging app Telegram on Wednesday for not suspending the account of a far-right elected official and social media influencer, in line with a press release from the Supreme Court.
Earlier in January, the court docket ordered Telegram to droop Nikolas Ferreira’s accounts and others “to stop the spread of criminal manifestations,” the assertion stated.
Failure to droop Ferreira’s account “is considered indirect collaboration to the continuing of criminal activities,” the court docket stated.
Ferreira, a federal consultant from the state of Minas Gerais, has greater than 300,000 subscribers on Telegram, 3.6 million followers on Tik Tok, and over 6 million followers on Instagram. He tends to put up evangelical and far-right content material, and help for former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
Brazilian authorities are nonetheless investigating after lots of of Bolsonaro’s supporters stormed authorities buildings within the capital Brasilia earlier in January, following his defeat in a presidential run-off vote final 12 months.
Ferreira’s social media savvy has performed an element in catapulting the 26-year-old’s political profession ahead; in 2022, he was elected with probably the most votes of all representatives working nationwide, and the third most votes forged for any consultant in Brazil’s historical past.
Tweeting concerning the case Wednesday, Ferreira wrote, “They want to disappear me from the internet.”
Telegram is being fined 100,000 Brazilian reais (about $20,000) per day of noncompliance, in line with a information launch from the Supreme Court.
In a letter from Telegram to Moraes, obtained by CNN Brasil, the corporate responded asking that the order be reconsidered.
It factors out that Ferreira is an elected official, and says no particular prison content material was recognized within the order. “No grounds or justifications were provided for the complete blocking of said channel, that is, the specific contents that would be considered illegal were not presented,” the letter stated.
CNN has reached out to Telegram for remark.
The Supreme Court has acknowledged that Telegram reported partial compliance with the order, however requested clarification on which particular content material to dam.