Brazilban of Elon Musk‘s social network, Xwill have little impact on the business, which has long relied on the South American nation for user growth and cultural influence but less so for revenue.
Brazil has historically been a small part of in 2021, the last full year before Musk’s takeover, these people said. That amounted to about 2% of the company’s total sales.
That may help explain why Musk was willing to close X’s office in Brazil rather than comply with a judge’s orders to remove some accounts for sharing alleged misinformation and hate speech. Once Musk shuttered the office in August,
“The decision to close the X office in Brazil was difficult,” Musk posted at the time, adding that agreeing to the judge’s orders would have been even harder. “There was no way we could explain our actions without being embarrassed.”
While sales from Brazil would likely represent a small piece of X’s overall business, any revenue is important for the company, which is still fighting to win back advertisers and pay off significant debt obligations. Some of the largest advertisers who used to buy X ads in Brazil, including Apple Inc. and Walt Disney Co, have already halted or cut back spending on the service. It’s possible that Brazil’s share of X’s business has grown since Musk’s takeover in late 2022, especially with US sales down as much as 50%.
Musk’s feud with Brazil could also lead to other business issues for the world’s richest man. The same judge who banned Shortly after the bank freeze, Starlink ultimately agreed to block X.
A spokesperson for
What will be harder to quantify, though, is the cultural impact of leaving Brazil and ceding the largest country in South America to competitors. Executives at X, previously called Twitter, relied on Brazil to study consumer behavior trends. In 2013, then Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff returned to Twitter after a multi-year hiatus to help revitalize her re-election bid, which she won in 2014, offering Twitter employees a chance to observe its service in a heated democratic political contest. User conversations around the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics in Brazil also played a role in how Twitter executives thought about live events on the service, former employees said.
Market research company eMarketer estimates that X has just over 40 million monthly users in Brazil, down nearly 5% from two years prior. Before the ban, eMarketer projected that audience to fall another 6% over the next two years. Some competitors are already reaping the benefits of X’s ban. Bluesky, a decentralized social networking service that was funded by Twitter and then-Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey back in 2019, added more than a million new users over a three-day period coinciding with the ban, the company said Saturday.
Brazil has historically been a small part of in 2021, the last full year before Musk’s takeover, these people said. That amounted to about 2% of the company’s total sales.
That may help explain why Musk was willing to close X’s office in Brazil rather than comply with a judge’s orders to remove some accounts for sharing alleged misinformation and hate speech. Once Musk shuttered the office in August,
“The decision to close the X office in Brazil was difficult,” Musk posted at the time, adding that agreeing to the judge’s orders would have been even harder. “There was no way we could explain our actions without being embarrassed.”
While sales from Brazil would likely represent a small piece of X’s overall business, any revenue is important for the company, which is still fighting to win back advertisers and pay off significant debt obligations. Some of the largest advertisers who used to buy X ads in Brazil, including Apple Inc. and Walt Disney Co, have already halted or cut back spending on the service. It’s possible that Brazil’s share of X’s business has grown since Musk’s takeover in late 2022, especially with US sales down as much as 50%.
Musk’s feud with Brazil could also lead to other business issues for the world’s richest man. The same judge who banned Shortly after the bank freeze, Starlink ultimately agreed to block X.
A spokesperson for
What will be harder to quantify, though, is the cultural impact of leaving Brazil and ceding the largest country in South America to competitors. Executives at X, previously called Twitter, relied on Brazil to study consumer behavior trends. In 2013, then Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff returned to Twitter after a multi-year hiatus to help revitalize her re-election bid, which she won in 2014, offering Twitter employees a chance to observe its service in a heated democratic political contest. User conversations around the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics in Brazil also played a role in how Twitter executives thought about live events on the service, former employees said.
Market research company eMarketer estimates that X has just over 40 million monthly users in Brazil, down nearly 5% from two years prior. Before the ban, eMarketer projected that audience to fall another 6% over the next two years. Some competitors are already reaping the benefits of X’s ban. Bluesky, a decentralized social networking service that was funded by Twitter and then-Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey back in 2019, added more than a million new users over a three-day period coinciding with the ban, the company said Saturday.
