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SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell has asked Supreme Court Justice Alexander Moraes to let her company’s Starlink internet service operate normally in Brazil. Her comments come in the wake of a growing feud between the SpaceX CEO and Twitter owner Elon Musk, who has clashed with Moraes over the latter’s decision to block Musk’s social media platform in the country.
Starlink has been caught in the middle after it refused court orders to block access to X, a move that threatened the service’s presence in Brazil. Shotwell’s comments follow Starlink’s announcement that it will comply with the order after Moraes ordered a freeze on Starlink’s finances in Brazil.
SpaceX CEO shares Starlink’s ability to provide internet access to underprivileged children in Brazil to convince Judge Moraes to stop ‘harassing’ the service
According to statistics the SpaceX service shared on X, Starlink had more than a quarter of a million users in Brazil as of mid-August. It has been caught in the middle of X’s feud with Brazil, which has seen Musk restore access to accounts believed to have sparked unrest in the country, as Moraes froze Starlink’s finances in Brazil and ordered the recovery of fines against X from SpaceX.
Moraes ordered the ban on August 30, and the decision was made because Starlink and X belong to the same “economic umbrella,” with the internet service refusing to comply with X’s ban unless its finances were frozen. Using the economic entity argument, Moraes attempted to recover fines charged to X through Starlink. However, the internet service filed its own legal challenges in the Supreme Court to have his order reversed.
In a post on X earlier today, SpaceX CEO Gwynne Shotwell made her first public comment on her company’s troubles in Brazil. Sharing a photo from her visit to a school in the Amazon, Shotwell declared that “It was one of my favorite days at work“since bringing Starlink”high-speed internet for a school in the Amazon“The image was”just a few of the hundreds of thousands of incredible Brazilians we strive to keep connected“, added the president of SpaceX, when asking Judge Moraes to “Please stop harassing Starlink and let them continue to serve the people of Brazil.”
Starlink began rolling out in Brazil in January 2022, and its presence in the Amazon is among many examples of the SpaceX subsidiary providing internet access to remote and distant regions. One of Starlink’s biggest use cases has been in Alaska, where it has outperformed traditional satellite internet providers on a cost basis.
Shotwell’s comments followed Starlink’s announcement that it had decided to comply with Moraes’ ban against X. His previous comments had shared that Moraes’ fines against X were “unconstitutionally” charged, and the latest part of the dispute in Brazil saw Starlink add that despite “the illegal treatment of Starlink in freezing our assets, we are complying with the order to block access to X in Brazil.”