Artists, musicians bear the brunt as Brazil ban on Musk's X limit their opportunities

Rio De Janeiro: Just hours before X went dark in Brazil, Adrienni Rodrigues, a music producer, rushed onto the social network to share the biggest news of her career: the launch of her first album.

She had spent nearly three years making the record with a team of other artists. Now, Rodrigues feared she would be cut off from her 4,000 followers before she could urge them to tune in.

“I had just enough time to post about it,” said Rodrigues, 30, a beat maker and DJ known by her stage name, Gau Beats. “An hour or two later, X was already down and I couldn’t see anything anymore.”

Rodrigues had come to rely on X as she built her career. It was where she connected with artists, found gigs and promoted her work. So she was crestfallen when, with just hours of warning, Brazil’s Supreme Court blocked the platform last weekend after its owner, Elon Musk, refused to comply with court orders to suspend certain accounts.

“It was a critical moment for us,” Rodrigues said. “And we lost this place where we already had a relationship with an audience that likes our music.”

Overnight, many Brazilians who had similarly built their businesses on X were thrown into a frenzied search for new platforms where many would have to start from scratch to reach clients, market their work and connect with sponsors.

The idea that so many businesses and livelihoods could be suspended so swiftly, on the whims of a single tech executive challenging a judge, shows how the digital economy has become concentrated in the hands of just a few technology giants.

“These platforms, they foster, they create a certain economic ecosystem around them,” said Leonardo Nascimento, coordinator of the Digital Humanities Laboratory at the Federal University of Bahia, in northeastern Brazil.

The shutdown of X, the latest in an aggressive campaign against fake news in Brazil, also ended up knocking legitimate businesses, Nascimento said. “It’s like throwing the baby out with the bath water.”

Brazil is X’s fifth-largest international market, with more than 20 million users, according to data firm Statista. While YouTube and Instagram are far more popular in Brazil, they do not offer the simple text-based format of X, which makes it a sort of national water cooler to discuss the news and gossip of the moment.

Its list of trending topics and the ability to share videos and links also set it apart from many of its competitors. “All these features make X a unique platform — and that’s why we depend on it,” said Thiago Ayub, technology director at Sage Networks, a telecommunications firm.

The ban on X sent Adriano Kitani into a panic. The platform was where he got about 80 per cent of his work as a freelance illustrator, mostly creating posters, T-shirts and art for video game channels.

Hours before the platform was blocked more than a week ago, he hurried to warn clients abroad by direct message that he would be forced to log off indefinitely.

“My biggest fear was losing touch,” said Kitani, 38, who has nearly 5,000 followers on X. “Because we don’t know how long we’re going to be in the dark.”

Kitani worried about finding work outside of X, where a vibrant community of illustrators often shared his art and connected him with a steady stream of new clients.

“We had something cool there,” he said. “We got caught up in a fight we have nothing to do with.”

Flávio Dantas, whose real-time commentary of reality shows like “Big Brother Brazil” regularly drew hundreds of likes on X, was also left in limbo when the platform was blocked.

“We were really tense,” Dantas said. “Because, here in Brazil, reality shows don’t exist without Twitter,” he added, using the platform’s former name.

The shutdown affected his ability to cash in on his 650,000 followers. Many brands that normally advertise on his X account stopped sponsoring content following the block of the social network, opting to linger on the sidelines rather than invest in marketing on other platforms.

“It’s all on pause; they are waiting to see what will happen,” Dantas said. “It hurt us quite a bit.”

With a new season of a popular reality show starting later this month, Dantas is rushing to adapt to new platforms with different features — and a more modest reach.

But he, and his followers, are switching away from X reluctantly. “It’s really sad. Because it’s like our home,” he said. “People love that place, people don’t want to leave.”

The shutdown also paralysed a major segment of X that is, to the surprise of many, based in Brazil: celebrity fan accounts dedicated to artists from Cardi B and Beyoncé to Timothée Chalamet and Dianna Agron.

“We lost X, but X also lost Brazilians,” said Caroline Metta, 27, a lawyer who helps run a Dua Lipa fan account with more than 46,000 followers, which was earning income through X’s premium subscription as well as events, sponsorships and merchandise deals.

There could be a ripple effect on artists, too, Metta said, since accounts like hers often create buzz around their idols’ new films and music.

“Brazilians have that passion. We are very energetic as fans,” she said. “We really follow along, we promote, we organize. We can make a lot happen for an artist.”

(Cardi B, for one, seemed to notice. “Wait a lot of my fan pages are Brazilian!!! Come back hold up!!” she posted on X.)

To fill the void, Brazilians flocked to other platforms. Bluesky, a social network similar to X, attracted a wave of new subscribers and saw its daily active users in Brazil more than double in just days, to 7.7 million, according to digital intelligence firm Similarweb. Daily users on Threads, the X competitor from Meta, grew by nearly a third, reaching 3.5 million users.

But both platforms enjoyed surges in new users when they debuted, only to quickly lose steam. It is unclear whether Brazilians will stick with those platforms and, according to Ayub, it may depend on how long X remains offline in the country. “If it takes too long, then it creates a space, a vacuum.”

Despite the exodus of users, the ban on Musk’s platform could have very little impact on its bottom line, with reports placing X’s revenues in Brazil at just 2 per cent of its overall earnings.

Nathália Rodrigues de Oliveira, a financial adviser with nearly 650,000 followers on X, had tracked Musk’s fight with the courts — and began shifting to other social networks before X was banned.

Though the platform had helped her become popular, Oliveira said it became less useful to her business when it was acquired and revamped by Musk.

“There are now a lot of bots,” said Oliveira, better known as Nath Finanças on social media. “I can’t see my timeline anymore. I can’t really see people.”

Rodrigues, the music producer, has embraced new platforms, too. On Threads, where she is building a following and promoting her album, she discovered a new community of artists and fans.

“There was an upside to all this,” she said. “It opened up opportunities that I hadn’t really considered before.”

For Metta, the transition hasn’t been so seamless. Fans have been slow to switch over to other platforms, making it harder to rebuild her community.

“It’s like starting from scratch,” she said. “To be honest, we’re praying every day for X to come back.”