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”.
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?
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.
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.
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.
The Hungarian twitter community is very small, I’d be surprised if it were a censorship target. Do you have a source on this?
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.
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.
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.
