Late on Friday afternoon, Justice Alexandre de Moraes – who has been engaged in a dispute with X’s owner, Elon Musk, since April – ordered the “immediate, complete and total suspension of X’s operations” in the country, “until all court orders … are complied with, fines are duly paid, and a new legal representative for the company is appointed in the country”.

He gave Brazil’s National Telecommunications Agency 24 hours to enforce the decision. Once notified, the agency must pass the order on to the more than 20,000 broadband internet providers in the country, each of which must block X.

In an interview with the TV channel Globonews, the agency’s president, Carlos Manuel Baigorri, said the order had already been passed on to internet providers.

“Since we’re talking about more than 20,000 companies, each will have its own implementation time, but … we expect that probably over the weekend all companies will be able to implement the block,” he said.

Justice Moraes also summoned Apple and Google to “implement technological barriers to prevent the use of the X app by users of the iOS and Android systems” and to block the use of virtual private network (VPN) applications.

The decision imposes a daily fine of R$50,000 (£6,800) on individuals and companies that attempt to continue using X via VPN.

-3 points

I’m kind of on the fence with this one.

As much as I dislike Twitter/X and it’s owner; their ‘crime’ is refusing to silence the political opponents of those currently in power, then further refusing to pay fines for that decision… Decisions, at least in principle, I agree with.

That said: I haven’t actually seen the content that’s at the center of this dispute; the posts of those political opponents. I’m also not very familiar with Brazils politics, so perhaps there’s context I’m missing.

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1 point

If that’s what you think is wrong with Twitter, you might be one of the bad guys

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3 points

that’s what you think is wrong with Twitter

?

What is ‘that’ exactly…?

I’ve said nothing about what’s wrong with twitter. I’ve said I agree with refusing to silence political opposition for those in power, at least in principle. I’ve also, at least tried, to be pretty clear I’m likely missing some contex; so that may be a bit of a misinterpretation of the situation.

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35 points

musk has no problems with taking down political opponents’ xitter accounts when the request is coming from “right wing” governments (rather authoritarian or far-right)

he doesn’t care about freedom of speech, he only cares about his kind of speech. If he refused all take down requests, i would agree with you

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8 points
*

As far as I understand this is a right-wing authoritarian gov silencing left-wing opponent’s.

Am i mistaken?

/pre-post edit: Yes, yes I am.

That certainly throws out any bit of sympathy I may of had… Though I still think they made the right decision to refuse to comply.

¯\(-_-)/¯ oh well.

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20 points

their ‘crime’ is refusing to silence the political opponents of those currently in power

First they came for the christofascists who attempted a coup, and I didn’t speak out 😔

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5 points

It seems that the strongest justification is that they closed their local branch, and have no legal representation here in Brazil, which is required by law for them to be able to operate.

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1 point

they closed their local branch

That was due to threats of arrest for not paying these fines, that were issued for refusing to silence critics.

I was trying to skip past all those middle steps and get to the root of the issue. What started it all.

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7 points

their ‘crime’ is refusing to silence the political opponents of those currently in power, then further refusing to pay fines for that decision…

Isn’t it natural: if you refuse to obey numerous court orders and pay your fines, you’ll get even worse court orders. This is not exactly the way to challenge the reasons for these other orders.

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52 points

When you’re too corrupt, even for Brazil, that really does say something.

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6 points

You know how Americans have ZERO base to stand on talking about other countries anymore? Didn’t get the memo? You guys are the bottom of the barrel now in every aspect. Sheesh.

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55 points

They’re more WhatsApp people than Twitter people anyway.

But this is pretty standard legal stuff. Musk just doesn’t think he has to send a lawyer down to argue his case. He can blow it off, thinking that he’s simply above the law.

It isn’t even corruption, per say. It’s just entitlement slamming into another state’s basic sovereignty.

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4 points
*

Well, maybe I’m just too GenX, but, to me, that’s a distinction without a difference. WhatsApp is texting with extra steps, and Twitter is for Nazis. I’ve never used the former and gave up the latter along with FB and insta early on during covid. Reddit was my last social whatever, and I jumped that ship last June for this last shout.

I’ve never had tiktaky or snapsnore. Most of my time on my phone is spent either here or listening to news podcasts— which is pretty much what I did as a teenager: listening to NPR as my morning routine then a news/music mix throughout the day.

Hmmm…. How unusual and a little confusing to be both impressed and disappointed in oneself… well that’s why some of our best paid scientists are furiously genetically engineering new strains of cannabis! So I don’t have to deal with this shit!

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6 points

WhatsApp is texting with extra steps, and Twitter is for Nazis.

No shortage of Nazis on Whatsapp. And not the Discount Donny Groypers, either. Real Boys From Brazil. People with an actual Nazi pedigree.

How unusual and a little confusing to be both impressed and disappointed in oneself

Eh. We all eat from the trough of ideology.

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7 points

They’re more WhatsApp people than Twitter people anyway.

I thought they are orkut people?

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9 points

Orkut lmao that’s a deep cut. Remember my Brasilian friend growing up using it and I was like wtf is this.

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-23 points

Gotta love the lemmy hive mind being pro censorship just to hate on elon

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20 points

censorship of what? Twitter, now X?

when i was on twitter, before elon took it over, i remember reporting many openly fascist accounts and they used to regularly go down (to reappear under a different name with some new numbers attached). Hate speech, racist slurs, calls to violence… verbal scum. You call taking that shit down “censorship”?

Justice Alexandre de Moraes had issued a court order forcing the site formerly known as Twitter to block several users as part of his investigation into the former president Jair Bolsonaro’s attempts to stay in power after his 2022 election defeat.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/08/elon-musk-brazil-x-jair-bolsonaro

it looks like they’re trying to protect their democracy? Shutting down a coup and it’s enablers (sounds familiar?) isn’t censorship.

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2 points

It is when you’re on team coup…

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9 points

This has less to do with Elon and more to do with twitter itself. Why were other platforms created in the first place like Lemmy? Could it be to decentralize these platforms so that no one entity can control them, including the government? This whole shit show with Brazil shows us exactly why these platforms should exist. The oppression of the people need to stop.

Instead of complaining about others and offering no contributions to this platform, I’d love to hear your take on this and start an open discussion. It seems like you have something on your mind, so why not speak it?

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23 points

Censorship isn’t the same as consequences.

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2 points

They gotta love my mailing lists. Backups stored on every subscriber hard drive

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48 points

Spread it to Everybody from Brazil: Leave Xitter, JOIN MASTODON!

How to join Mastodon:

https://www.followchain.org/join-mastodon/

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8 points

People seem to be going to bluesky, even the president is there

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23 points

I think that site has incorrect information. They wrote “you need to sign up separately on every server on Mastodon to see their community posts” but surely that’s the opposite of what the fediverse is about? Mastodon’s server page even says that with a single account you can see everything.

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-8 points

How about not using “Social Media” at all? Too out there?

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12 points

Are you aware that Lemmy is social media too?

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37 points

There is some misleading information in there. Probably better to just get straight to the point with the ‘standard’ https://joinmastodon.org/ link.

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2 points

Is Xitter pronounced Shitter? Makes South Park prophetic again.

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2 points

Of course it is.

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4 points

So if you’re are Brazilian nazi, go get a Windows phone

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