Elon Musk has to be picky about where he fights for free speech, corporate law expert says

Musk framed the months of legal back-and-forth as a principled battle for free speech, painting Brazilian Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes as an overstepping tyrant bent on censoring his political opponents.

The Brazilian high court last week seized over $3 million from X and SpaceX to settle the fines levied against X, and earlier this month telecom regulators in the country threatened to revoke Starlink’s license to operate in Brazil. The Times reported that a loss of revenue in one of X’s largest markets could have contributed to the company’s decision to comply with court orders now.

But an expert on corporate law told Business Insider that there’s a reason the billionaire isn’t taking his battle of free speech principles to, say, France.

Pavel Durov’s arrest was a warning

“All you have to see is what happened to Telegram, with Pavel,” Anat Alon-Beck, a researcher focused on corporate law and governance at Case Western Reserve University’s School of Law, told BI.

In August, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in France and charged with six crimes related to illegal content being hosted on his messaging platform, including “complicity” in the distribution of child sexual abuse material and drug trafficking on Telegram, as well as refusing to cooperate with an official investigation into the platform.

Durov’s arrest raised international questions about tech executives’ responsibility for the content hosted on their sites. Telegram, in a statement released shortly after his arrest, said Durov has “nothing to hide” and called the CEO’s detainment “absurd.”

Outside the US, Alon-Beck noted, there’s more privacy protection for consumers, more enforcement of content moderation laws, as well as different types of regulation, which forces tech executives to reconsider their approach to content moderation on their platforms to mitigate the risk of overstepping local laws and facing legal consequences — as Musk did in Brazil, and Durov did in France.

“In those markets, you have to comply. Nobody is above the law — not even Elon Musk,” Alon-Beck said, adding that it doesn’t matter what Musk feels about international laws, or how they compare to American regulations: “The point is, when you have global businesses and you’re operating outside the US, you do have to listen to those laws or pay the price. If Elon wants to be able to travel freely, he’ll have to comply, just like others will have to.”

Musk has previously complied with content moderation requests from other governments, including the increasingly authoritarian nations of Turkey and India. In 2023, he indicated he would abide by the European Union’s rulebook on content moderation, known as the Digital Services Act, Politico reported.

Alon-Beck said Durov’s arrest served as a warning by French authorities to all tech executives who try to skirt local regulations, especially those related to content moderation on social media.

“I think that point was very well taken — or should be taken — by others,” Alon-Beck said.

After the Telegram CEO was arrested, Musk quickly chimed in on the situation with a series of posts on X, including adding a “FreePavel” hashtag to a clip of Durov being interviewed by Tucker Carlson.

Alon-Beck told BI that, in countries like France with strict laws around content moderation, Musk is no different than Durov, and she would expect he could be arrested if he continues to push the boundaries of local content moderation laws.

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s Instagram, or X, or Telegram — they’re all platforms in those countries that are doing things differently than what we do here in the US,” Alon-Beck said. “It doesn’t matter if I agree or disagree. The point is, they have those enforcement systems — and as you can see, they’re strict about them.”

Representatives for X, Telegram, and the Brazilian Supreme Court did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.