I get that, but Twitter isn’t based in Brazil at all. What happens if, say, China declares that certain posts are “misinformation”? Should those be taken down without complaint?
We routinely censor content to placate China; like, all the time.
I believe each country should get to have a say in what is permissible, and content deemed unacceptable should be blockable by region. I don’t think it’s reasonable to say “well it’s on the internet so it’s untouchable” simply because the server is in another country.
If a government is imposing harmful censorship I think supporting resistance of that censorship is the right thing to do. A company that isn’t located in that country, ethically shouldn’t be complying with such orders. Make them burn political capital taking extreme and implausible measures.
Define “harmful censorship”. I would argue—strongly—that censoring hate speech and misinformation is a public service.
I also think that any service (twitter) refusing to abide by the laws of a country (Brazil) has no place in that country.
I believe each country should get to have a say in what is permissible, and content deemed unacceptable should be blockable by region.
Agreed. But if I’m running a website, I’m not going to block content based on what some other country that I don’t live in wants and why should I?
I’m not sure why it’s so tempting to think of internet content as a special entity that defies otherwise established rules. Maybe it’s simply because no special effort is needed today to get the content across the border?
Regardless, we aren’t talking about your geocities page, we’re talking about billion dollar businesses. Would it be appropriate to take your physical storefront across international borders and insist that the government there should have zero say as to what products you sell? If not, why is it appropriate to do the same with web content? X is selling content in the form of ad distribution, countries should get to decide if that content is appropriate for distribution.