‘Tearful’ Paulo Costa reacts to Brazilian Twitter/X ban: ‘I will not pay!’

Welcome to Midnight Mania!

If you see fewer of your favorite Brazilian MMA fighters in this column in the coming weeks, know that it’s not by my choice. On Friday (Aug. 30, 2024), a Brazilian Supreme Court Judge, Alexandre de Moraes, officially blocked X — the social media platform formerly known as Twitter — after owner Elon Musk failed to comply with the judge’s order to remove accounts from the platform that were breaking Brazilian law. Musk has declared Moraes an “evil dictator cosplaying as a judge” and intends to continue his fight for free speech.

Many have suggested using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to get around the banning, but Judge Moraes has instituted a harsh penalty of $8,874 per day for any Brazilians caught using that workaround. Safe to say, X is not looking worth the risk for most Brazilians.

Paulo Costa is one of the most active Brazilian UFC fighters on Twitter, well-known for his silly juice memes and goofy antics like stealing Merab Dvalishvili’s meals from the UFC Performance Institute (PI). Social media has been a huge boon in growing Costa’s fanbase, but the Brazilian made it clear he will NOT be risking that massive fine. In one post, he wrote, “Bye MY EVERYONE, I will not pay 8,000 $. Daily to be here.”

Check out all of the Brazilian’s reaction Tweets below:

Now, I’m not a lawyer. My Portuguese is worse than Mike Goldberg’s. I don’t claim to understand the full extent of this ruling, but I have some thoughts on potential workarounds. Can an athlete like Costa fire up some Tweets while out of the country in Las Vegas for a fight? Could he hire a US-based social media manager or even a training partner, then text that person his various thoughts to be posted online? Can he still sell his account, which has 640k followers and surely carries some monetary value?

One way or another, the MMA social media landscape may change quite a bit in the coming days.

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