Members of Brazil’s supreme court have unanimously voted to uphold the ban on X, after Elon Musk’s refusal to comply with local laws led to the social network being blocked in one of its biggest markets.
On Monday, five of the court’s justices were asked to consider Friday’s decision to temporarily banish X from Brazil, where the platform has more than 21 million users. By lunchtime all five had voted in favour of the ban.
Casting his vote in favour of X’s continued suspension, Flávio Dino said the company’s decision to “deliberately” ignore a court order to name a legal representative in Brazil suggested it “considered itself above the rule of law”.
Even if it somehow gets reinstated, the damage is done. Majority have already left for alternatives.
Are we seeing the same thing? I’ve never seen as much activity from Brazilian users on X as now.
I guess all this block did was teach the Brazilian population how to use VPNs. And most are just ignoring the threat of a US$ 8.900,00 daily fine from the dictator because, by its very nature, VPNs keep them anonymous. X is on bad terms with the dictator, so it will not expose anyone’s IP addresses even if requested by him. None of the major VPN companies are based in Brazil, and it would be hard to ask them for IP addresses too.
Even some major news outlets are still posting on X, saying that they’re posting through “international staff members.” Some politicians and notable personalities are starting to use the same excuse: “someone out of the country is posting for me.” This block is looking pretty ineffective, and it’s serving as an educational incentive for people to start using VPNs. If any more social media platforms are also blocked, people are already well prepared to circumvent the blocks.
So, what has the dictator gained from this temper tantrum? He forced X out of the country, leaving no local offices to receive his orders, even the reasonable ones like those related to normal (non-political persecution) crimes. And he strengthened the protests that were already scheduled for September 7th (Brazil Independence Day), which will turn into an event mainly asking for his impeachment.
Tell me you support Bolsonaro and Musk without telling me you support them
Actually, Bolsonaro is a fraud. He only acts in the self-interest of himself and his immediate family members. As he’s being threatened by the dictator, with some speculation that he could be arrested at any time, he’s keeping silent during this whole X blocking incident so he doesn’t suffer retaliation from the dictator.
As for Musk, I know that, like every businessman, he has his financial interests. I surely would if I were one, and I would not blame anyone for doing the same, as nobody gets rich spending money unwisely. However, I can recognize that his passion for free speech is genuine; otherwise, he wouldn’t have bought Twitter for $44 billion. Under the most reasonable analysis, this was a bad deal in terms of return on investment. Maybe it’ll bear fruit in the long term, but it’s a big, nebulous maybe. So as he decided to buy it anyway, he surely did so on principle, not for money.
However, I can recognize that his passion for free speech is genuine; otherwise, he wouldn’t have bought Twitter for $44
You really make recoil in disgust at the depths of denial you can plunge to in order to stan a billionaire.
“Musk […] passion for free speech is genuine”
As long as it lines up with the right wing agenda, otherwise it’s woke bullshit that needs to be censored and banned, right?
Delusional, both of you.
Before Elon acquired Twitter, the platform enforced an one-sided policy of censoring right-wing points of view. It even started actively shielding the left from any criticism, such as when the Hunter Biden Laptop story was blatantly censored so as to not affect Joe Biden’s presidential campaign negatively.
Now, he lets both sides of the political spectrum participate in the debate without censorship. Are you trying to say things got worse because of this?
Before Elon acquired Twitter, the platform enforced an one-sided policy of censoring right-wing points of view. It even started actively shielding the left from any criticism, such as when the Hunter Biden Laptop story was blatantly censored so as to not affect Joe Biden’s presidential campaign negatively.
What’s funny is that there are a slew of articles from 2019 to 2022, before Musk’s takeover, talking about a study that found Twitter’s algorithm actually had a right wing bias because conservative opinions generated higher engagement (both positive and negative) so it boosted them more than liberal ones.
Also Elon has censored many news stories about himself and his companies since his acquisition. He hasn’t stopped censorship, he merely took control of it.
A handful of citations:
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-59011271
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/05/twitter-musk-censors-turkey-election-erdogan
https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-journalists-free-speech-mashable-matt-binder
I guess all this block did was teach the Brazilian population how to use VPNs.
ISPs have a period to comply with the order. Mine still hasn’t blocked the shitshow.
ISPs shall block, X users shall use VPN to circumvent.
I doubt the average twitter user gives a semblance of a shit.
When a X user finds himself unable to load X’s main page or the app, he will be motivated to investagate why, and finally he’ll find out VPNs are the solution. X’s brazilian users were already discussing and suggesting VPNs to each other on the days leading up to the block. And the block is not 100% yet: smaller ISPs are taking longer to set up the block.
You mean: when an X user finds themselves unable to load the main page, they’ll get frustrated, uninstall the app and leave a review about how it’s broken.
You grossly overestimate the tech savvyness of your average internet user, and their willingness to spend any amount of time or money to fix a minor inconvenience.
If the solution is as simple as downloading a VPN app from the smartphone app store and clicking “activate VPN,” I wouldn’t consider it tech-savvy territory. In the past, VPNs were indeed esoteric tech for nerds, but nowadays they’re commoditized stuff. And if Brazil’s regime keeps getting more repressive under the dictator, with the blocking of more social media sites, more people will have the opportunity/necessity to learn about VPNs.
Yeah, I doubt most people will go this route. VPNs cost money, Twitter alternatives are free.
Free VPNs don’t cost money. And times have changed: there are some reputable free VPNs, like ProtonVPN and Cloudflare’s WARP.
The judge that banned X also stated a fine of 10k for anyone using a VPN to circumvent the ban.
Difficult to police and enforce, but it’s been made clear that accessing X is considered illegalIn other words: the judge issued an order that affects everyone, not only the parties involved in the judicial process, and without the need for each affected individual to be formally notified so he/she can know how to avoid being fined. So, he basically legislated by himself. No wonder people are saying he’s a dictator.
Twitter users aren’t smart enough to figure out how to use VPNs
They’re Brazilians mate, even if the ban gets lifted in 10 years and xitter is somehow around, Brazilians will immediately flock back to it. They have unconditional love for their social media
The funny thing is, the right in America are trying to push laws that make the company responisible for user posted content.
If that happens, and I go to twitter and post something illegal, I’M still liable for breaking the laws, but now so is twitter.
So eventually, if he tries to be above the law in America, SOMEBODY is going to post child porn. Then, by their own laws, twitter is liable for that illegal action.
This is going to lead to one of two things. Either
- Twitter shuts down
Or
- Musk goes to jail.
Aw hell…who am I kidding? It’s going to be “Well, he’s one of us. It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it”.
He’ll pay a 2 million dollar fine, which is peanuts to him, and this shitty world will keep on going.
Not gonna lie my inner child would be delighted to see Brazil shooting down Starlink satellites.
they don’t need to, they just need to seize the ground PoPs and block ips to make it unusably slow.
I thought StarLink had inter-satelite laser links? Theoretically it should be faster than a VPN out of the country because light travels faster in a vacuum. But maybe this was another one of Elon’s “full self driving next year!” features.
Lol everybody here talking trash about X breaking the law. But when a streaming service up their price it is about sailing the high seas, torrent this and pirate that.
Don’t you have boots to lick?
No contradiction. Law is a dumb basis for deciding what you like and don’t like.
The really funny thing here is that Elon’s Twitter has openly complied with censorship orders from Hungary already. The free speech stuff is fake. Twitter does overt political censorship on request.
He does it for right wing autocrats. He’s fine with censorship on their behalf. He’s fine with banning journalists who disagree with him. But banning right wing disinformation??? Now that’s going too far!
Alternative Facts, not disinformation.
“Lies”. Just “lies”.
The Hungarian twitter community is very small, I’d be surprised if it were a censorship target. Do you have a source on this?
My bad, it was Turkey, not Hungary.
Gotcha
There is absolutely no saint in this whole story. Musk is a billionaire trying to play god, while the supreme court is also trying to play god. Both consider themselves “above the rule of law”, while an entire population (composed of 200 million people) is divided between “Musk is right, let’s impeach Moraes” and “Moraes is right, let’s jail Musk”. There’s no good or evil here, for me, it’s the grand-old classic Divide et impera. It’s so obvious!
The good side of all this is that people are slowly learning about decentralized platforms, getting a little closer to tech-savvy. People are discovering fediverse, even if it’s through a not-so-good fediverse instance (Threads from Meta, or Bluesky). When people really literate themselves about the decentralization, it’ll be harder for both state bureaucracies as well as for corporations. The mastodon in the room which neither corps nor govs want to talk about (pun intented).
Musk literally refused to comply to the supreme court of Brazil. How the heck are they in the wrong for blocking X?
Imagine people that work using X as their sustenance platform. Just imagine it. Oh, no one cares about them, neither government, nor corporations, nor minions from both sides… Because Hobbes was right. Men is a wolf to men.
Oh dear, “both sides are the same”, amirite?
Nailed it. Prove me wrong.
Refusal to comply with local laws suggests social media company ‘considered itself above the rule of law’
Seems like a correct observed to me.
It’s almost as if companies are used to do whatever the fuck they want and the moment there’s pushback you have pissing, screaming and gnashing of teeth.
Either that or they think the market isn’t worth the effort. Which is fine. I hope other countries follow. Then do the same with meta.
Their third most active market that they just lost
It might be their third most popular country but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s profitable. Brazil isn’t exactly known for spending a lot on things like Twitter Blue or ads, especially per capita.
I have a theory they looked at the numbers and realized that shedding the load would save more money than they would gain by staying. But then again that might be giving Elon too much credit.
