Smearing the government of Brazil as its Supreme Court moves to ban X – The Everything App, Elon Musk has aligned himself with far-right populist Jair Bolsonaro.

This comes as no surprise given his idol worship of Donald Trump. In a cushy interview, the manchild billionaires spent over two hours venerating each other. Musk has a particular fixation on Trump’s machismo, suggesting several times that his masculinity would be powerful and intimidating to enemies on the world stage. Musk is a simple-minded individual, charmed by bullish businessmen and coquettish alt-girls.

During his flailing platform’s legal negotiations with the Brazilian state, Musk has allowed his followers to perpetuate libellous misinformation about Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes, including the best-loved conspiracy theory of the 2020s: that he’s bought and paid for by the World Economic Forum. The WEF, of course, also orchestrated the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, and various global events and left-leaning causes, according to X accounts engagement-boosted by Musk himself, with such handles as ‘Culture Critic’ and ‘End Wokeness’.

X has repeatedly defied Brazilian court orders for weeks. Musk has relied on his treasured right to free-speech-veering-on-libel, calling Justice Moraes a “dictator” and a “fake judge.” Moraes accused Musk and X of ‘wilful circumvention of a court-ordered block’. In response to legal proceedings this week, it appears X will return to Brazil having chosen to comply with the court’s demands. Those include: the removal of accounts accused of engaging in disinformation (the platform’s biggest problem, which predates – but was sent spiralling out of control during – Musk’s ownership); fines for illegal conduct; and a new legal representative for X in Brazil.

Based on an intercontinental survey with responses from over four hundred academic researchers in humanities, social sciences and computer sciences, the International Panel on the Information Environment says that the “unchecked power” of social media owners such as Musk “poses a grave risk” to factual and informative news. Its co-founder, Philip Howard, a professor of internet studies at the University of Oxford, suggested the influence of social media platform owners and their control over content and moderation “significantly impacts the quality and integrity of information”.

It doesn’t take a panel of sociologists to reach the conclusion that Musk, with his anti-moderation stance and his platform’s augmentation of alt-right and white supremacist content, marks a danger to society. His followers feel that he is a genius, and he runs a platform used by 250 million people every day. 65 per cent of users say they use X as a news source. Elon Musk comes from an era of tech which can best be described as anarchistic neoconservatism; with that loose ideology, he influences hundreds of millions of news feeds and young minds.

Brazil’s show of strength against the social media platform comes at the same time as Australia’s proposed ban on social media for children by using age-based restrictions and a tougher verification process. In June, New York regulators signed a bill aiming to make social media less ‘addictive’ to children, with a view to making children’s feeds less algorithmically tailored. 

This global gathering of attacks on the foundations of contemporary social media may shake Silicon Valley into a new phase of its existence. Ideally, one that censors mis- and disinformation and better protects children from dangerous content which has led to a mental health epidemic. Children are at great risk of exposure to self-harm and suicidality, being indoctrinated by manipulative elements online, and being groomed towards fascist and white supremacist ideologies.

The cultlike effects of social media misinformation on middle-aged to elderly people are horrifying. Take QAnon, the fabled internet character which posted cryptic messages from the Trump Administration directly to the American public via 4chan and Facebook. Or Pizzagate, the theory that a cabal of blood-sucking, baby-killing paedophiles is run through certain pizza parlours, which led to a real-world shooting.

People who consume and share this content online are members of the public. Mothers, brothers, coworkers. Taxi drivers. Investors. Engineers. Pilots, baristas, midwives.

In Brazil, New York and Australia, they’re thinking of the children. They are right to: we are yet to know the consequences of raising generations of hyperconsumptive people on algorithmic content. But its effects on adults alone have brought us to the most dangerous and pivotal juncture in the history of culture, of the news, of international relations, of safety and security.

Litigators and legislators owe it to the future of society to mitigate the impacts of men like Musk.