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[TNYT] Brazil Blocks X After Musk Ignores Court Orders

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deriks

4-Time GIF/Meme God
I'll try to keep less political as possible

TLDNR said:
The social network will go dark in the nation of 200 million, the result of an escalating fight between Elon Musk and a Brazilian judge over what can be said online.

Brazil blocked the social network X on Friday after its owner, Elon Musk, refused to comply with a Brazilian judge’s orders to suspend certain accounts, the biggest test yet of the billionaire’s efforts to transform the site into a digital town square where just about anything goes.

Alexandre de Moraes, a Brazilian Supreme Court justice, ordered internet providers to block access to X across the nation of 200 million because the company lacked a necessary legal representative in Brazil.

Mr. Musk closed X’s office in Brazil last week after Justice Moraes threatened arrests for ignoring his orders to remove X accounts that he said broke Brazilian laws.

X said that it viewed Justice Moraes’ orders as illegal and that it planned to break their legal seal and publish them. “Free speech is the bedrock of democracy and an unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is destroying it for political purposes,” Mr. Musk wrote in a post on Friday.

In a highly unusual move, Justice Moraes also said that any person in Brazil who tried to still use X via common privacy software called a virtual private network, or VPN, could be fined nearly $9,000 a day.
In another uncommon move, Justice Moraes froze the finances of a second Musk business in Brazil, SpaceX's Starlink satellite-internet service, to try to collect $3 million in fines he has levied against X.

Starlink — which has recently exploded in popularity in Brazil, with more than 250,000 customers — said that it planned to fight the order and would make its service free in Brazil if necessary.

Mr. Musk and Justice Moraes have been sparring for months. Mr. Musk says Justice Moraes is illegally censoring conservative voices. Justice Moraes says Mr. Musk is illegally obstructing his work to rid the Brazilian internet of hate speech and attacks on democracy.

In his order, Justice Moraes said Mr. Musk was an “outlaw” who intended to “allow the massive spread of disinformation, hate speech and attacks on the democratic rule of law, violating the free choice of the electorate, by keeping voters away from real and accurate information.”

The fight is now at the center of Mr. Musk’s bid to turn X into a safe haven for people to say nearly anything they want, even if it hurts the business in the process.

In dozens of posts since April, Mr. Musk has built up Justice Moraes as one of the world’s biggest enemies of free speech, and it appears Mr. Musk is now betting the judge will cave to the public backlash he believes the block will cause.
But the longer the blackout on X lasts, the more it will test Mr. Musk’s commitment to his ideology at the expense of revenue, market share and influence.

“He might be losing money in the short term, but he’s gaining enormous political capital,” said Luca Belli, a professor at FGV Law School in Rio de Janeiro, who has tracked Mr. Musk’s strategy with X.
Since 2022, Brazil ranks fourth globally with more than 25 million downloads of the X app, according to Appfigures, an app data firm. X’s international business has become more important under Mr. Musk, as American advertisers have fled the site because of an increase in hate speech and misinformation since Mr. Musk bought it.

Mr. Musk has overhauled the social network since buying it for $44 billion in 2022, when it was still called Twitter. In addition to renaming the service, he jettisoned many of its rules about what users could say. He also reinstated suspended accounts, including that of former President Donald J. Trump, and said no account should be permanently blocked.

Yet Mr. Musk said X would still follow the law where it operates. Under his leadership, X has complied with demands from the Indian government to withhold accounts and removed links to a BBC documentary that painted a critical portrait of Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister.

At other times, Mr. Musk has battled orders to remove content. In Australia, he successfully fought an order to remove videos depicting a violent attack against a local bishop. The videos were hidden from users in the country, but available on the platform elsewhere.

But he has met a formidable challenge in Justice Moraes.

In recent years, few people globally have had a larger singular impact on what is said online than the Brazilian judge. He has emerged as one of Brazil’s most powerful — and polarizing — figures after the country’s Supreme Court enshrined him with expansive powers to crack down on threats to democracy online, amid fears about a far-right movement led by Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s former president.
Ahead of Brazil’s 2022 election, the court empowered Justice Moraes to unilaterally order the takedown of accounts he deemed threats. He has since wielded that power liberally, often in sealed orders that do not disclose why a given account was suspended.

He has ordered X to remove at least 140 accounts, most of them right-wing, including some of Brazil's most prominent conservative pundits and members of Congress.
Some of those accounts questioned Mr. Bolsonaro’s 2022 election loss and sympathized with the right-wing mob that stormed Brazil’s Congress and Supreme Court in a bid to provoke a military takeover of government.

Justice Moraes has also led multiple criminal investigations into Mr. Bolsonaro and a ruling that deemed the former president ineligible to run in Brazil’s next presidential election.
Those efforts have made Justice Moraes a hero of Brazil’s left — and the No. 1 enemy of Brazil’s right.

Mr. Musk’s sudden entry into the debate in April, with a series of posts calling Justice Moraes a dictator, gave new life to Mr. Bolsonaro’s right-wing movement. Mr. Bolsonaro lauded Mr. Musk at rallies and his supporters held signs thanking the tech mogul for coming to their rescue.

Yet when Justice Moraes included Mr. Musk in an investigation into disinformation and began threatening X with fines, the company sent a conciliatory letter that it would comply with the judge’s orders.
Then, in recent weeks, X stopped complying. After Justice Moraes warned that the company’s legal representative in Brazil would face arrest, Mr. Musk closed X’s office.

“The people of Brazil have a choice to make — democracy, or Alexandre de Moraes,” X wrote when announcing the move.

Mr. Musk has used X as a political cudgel. To his nearly 200 million followers, he has repeatedly boosted Mr. Trump and other right-wing leaders, like President Javier Milei of Argentina, while mocking politicians he opposes, such as Vice President Kamala Harris and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil.

Mr. Lula supported the block of X. “Just because someone has money doesn’t mean they can do whatever they want,” he said Friday. “They must accept the country’s rules.”

The U.S. Embassy in Brazil said it was monitoring the dispute. “The United States values freedom of speech as a cornerstone of a healthy democracy,” the embassy said in a statement.

Several authoritarian governments have banned X, including China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. Some other nations have temporarily blocked the site at times. In June 2021, Nigeria suspended the service for about seven months after the company removed posts threatening violence from the country’s then president.

In his order Friday, Justice Moraes told Brazil’s telecommunications agency and major internet providers to block people in Brazil from using X. He also told Apple and Google to prevent downloads of X’s app in Brazil. The telecom agency was told to comply within 24 hours, while the companies have five days. X may remain accessible in Brazil until the agency and companies comply.

To get around blocks of online services, people have long used VPNs, the privacy software that can make internet traffic appear as though it was coming from a different country.

Yet Justice Moraes wants to prevent that. He ordered Apple and Google to find a way to prevent popular VPN apps from allowing users to access X, and he proposed the nearly $9,000 daily fine against individuals who did so.

It is not the first time Brazilian authorities have blocked an online service for ignoring court orders. Yet such blocks have usually lasted just days before a company has reversed course and complied. That was the case in 2022, when Justice Moraes blocked the messaging app Telegram for a weekend.

Mr. Belli, the law professor, said he expected the same with Mr. Musk and X. “My bet is that he might be blocked for a couple of days, and then will comply and portray himself as a victim,” Mr. Belli said. “So he’s still winning.”

To sum up:
- Federal Supreme Court de Moraes demands some bans and arquives of users of X. Those government demands can't be reveal as government demands, and should be said as legal methods of X itself
- Musk denies saying that those demands are ilegal by the local constitution itself, and the company policies are very clear with that
- de Moraes threatens to arrest Brazilians X workers if he doesn't comply
- Musk kills X as a company in Brazil, with local employees turned to foreigners employees
- by August 28, de Moraes threatens to end national access to X if Musk doesn't have a local president in the next 24 hours (which is implied that he or she would be arrested asap)
- Musk doesn't comply and says that this is a dictatorship move
- August 30, de Moraes sets the end of X's services in Brazil, with the app being pulled from digital stores too and a personal daily US$9,000 fine (R$50.000 here) if someone uses a VPN to use X
- august 31, later morning, X can't be access through normal ways
- Musk says that will show proof [in a near future] that de Moraes is not following the constitution

It's not the first time that social networks are banned here. Around the early 2010s WhatsApp got banned several times because the company didn't share with the government some messages, but all the times (which were a lot) was a matter of hours and things got back "to normal". Earlier 2023, Telegram got temporary banned because the company shared that doesn't has interest in a bill (that still didn't become a law) for regulation of social networks, and the Supreme Court demanded that they can't have a bias on that - which they delivered a message explained exactly that, so was more a backlash to the court


- Bro, did you see it?
- I saw it! And we are the dictators hahaha Wait a second, I got another call
- Duuuuuuude

 
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chromhound

Gold Member
Warner Bros Lol GIF by Joker Movie
 

Guilty_AI

Gold Member
Just use a VPN, like i will.

Moraes: You can't use VPN to access X
User: *uses VPN to hide his connection and access X*
Moraes:

re0zhvjzja341.jpg



He's likely doing this to give himself an excuse to fine influencers and politicians using the site, which is plain deplorable since its a system designed for selective justice. Then again, deplorable is just his standard now.
 
Well it is a global trend these to crack down on various media platform that do not adhere to par....government rules. Something similar is happening with Telegram and I think EU will do the same with Twitter in Europe. China is ahead of time :messenger_tears_of_joy:

But it is hilarious how so many people on Era are cheering on censorship and government control.
 
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Draugoth

Gold Member
Even so it's not easy, one can be found and be fined, and 50k is waaay out of my pocket to consider that

For sure, but we can focus as a tech news, which is

They can find you, but the ammount of work to fine a single regular user is not worth it. This was made to scare non tech literacy users.
 
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Guilty_AI

Gold Member
They can find you, but the ammount of work to fine a single regular user is not worth it. This was made to scare non tech literacy users.
Not even that. They can infer you're using VPN, but they can't know what you're accessing through it. There are certain security flaws that could potentially reveal what you're accessing if they're monitoring you but some VPNs already account for that and teach you how to avoid them. It's also important to make sure the VPN provider has a no-logs policy so there's no chance of them ever revealing what you accessed.

Proton VPN has all of that covered, and alternatively you can use Tor if you just want to browse some sites without needing fast internet.
 
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deriks

4-Time GIF/Meme God
Well it is a global trend these to crack down on various media platform that do not adhere to par....government rules. Something similar is happening with Telegram and I think EU will do the same with Twitter in Europe. China is ahead of time :messenger_tears_of_joy:

But it is hilarious how so many people on Era are cheering on censorship and government control.
I guess they cheer up because it's not declared in favor of them, and Elon Musk is mostly hated by them. But chances are that if something similar happens to someone in their neighborhood, they will be the ones calling for freedom of speech
 
Everything people don’t wish to talk about or is an inconvenience to them they will call it “political” and move on.

That word lost all its meaning
Yes. There's a very good word for that sort of thing, and that word is Politicized. Every important and serious issue is being increasingly politicized, where it's being identified as belonging to the "left" or the "right." It just leads to more tribalism, stifles debate regarding the substance of an issue, and discourages people from having values based on principles.
 
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Guilty_AI

Gold Member
I'd say governments censoring speech is really more of a human rights subject.
Same guy doing this is also sending police to intimidate family members of those he can't reach (even ordering intimate searchs on minors). Also, he's denying medical treatment to the people he is - illegaly, with no given cause, right for defense or even access to the processes - keeping in jail, one such person already died because of this. So yes, this whole situation is very much a human's rights issue.
 

DragoonKain

Neighbours from Hell
I’m not even one of those “oh my god, everything leads to fascism!” People, but over the past year or so, the amount of stuff going on with countries doing things to suppress social media or arrest people for what they say on social media has seemed to explode and I find this all very concerning. Countries are trying to control what and who is allowed on social media and that cannot be allowed to happen. It sets a terrible precedent. I don’t know where it will go, but I do know where it could go.

Once you open the door for countries to be able to influence what and who is allowed on these platforms then you keep the possibility open for much worse. Have to nip this in the bud. I think Elon has made a lot of mistakes since buying Twitter but standing up to Brazil for demanding he suspend certain accounts isn’t one of them. On this, he’s taking the correct approach. Maybe he’s done it a little childishly with the trash talk online, but as far as being on the right side, I believe he is on this one.
 

Unknown?

Member
Well it is a global trend these to crack down on various media platform that do not adhere to par....government rules. Something similar is happening with Telegram and I think EU will do the same with Twitter in Europe. China is ahead of time :messenger_tears_of_joy:

But it is hilarious how so many people on Era are cheering on censorship and government control.
They must love China and praise Nazis burning books then.
 

sankt-Antonio

:^)--?-<
Social Media was a mistake, should be banned/massively regulated everywhere. It killed widespread real journalism, and that is a much bigger problem than "freedom of speech" by Idiot#65465 or bot account#65489689. The negatives outweigh the positives imo.
 

FunkMiller

Member
Does anyone have examples of the kinds of posts claimed to be disinformation that Musk refused to get rid of?

Everyone leaping to his defence might want to actually see them before screaming censorship.
 
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Guilty_AI

Gold Member
Does anyone have examples of the kinds of posts claimed to be disinformation that Musk refused to get rid of?

Everyone leaping to his defence might want to actually see them before screaming censorship.
Not posts, the judge was asking them to take down entire accounts - what is explicitly forbidden by our constitution. Also, he'd send this orders in secret and demand the platform not to tell the users about it, aka they'd have to disguise the account removal as the platform's own decision - also illegal since it denies people the right for defense.

On that note, people who had their accounts taken down - or were even sent to jail - can't access the processes that supposedly would contain their "offences" that got them there, meaning they don't know what they're being accused of to warrant these punishments nor can they form any defense. Its denial of basic human rights at this point. Even people who need special medical treatment among the ones jailed are being denied temporary leaves for treatment. One such person already died because of this, and another one - a federal congressman - risking the same fate.
 
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GC_DALBEN

Member
Look for what this "Judge" has done here in Brasil, he violates all the rules to arrest someone that he doesn't like, 80% of the profiles he wanted to be taken down from "x' were not of people who were arrested or even being investigated, it was just profiles where people posted their OPINIONS.

He does what he wants, arrests who he wants, almost all of his decisions do not follow due process.

Some time ago he had an argument with a family in Italy and he destroyed that family's using the SUPREME COURT to investigate and block accounts of that family, and the footage of this confusion was hidden until a few days ago, and what actually happened was that MORAES' own son slapped the other person, the expert (perito) who saw the "tape" that saw the slap is currently being punished, we are fucked here in Brazil.

Our senate won't do anything, they are all together.

And the worst part is that the press (TV) and the left is largely applauding the fall of X, the funds that the Government pays to TV for "advertising" doubled from the last government to this one.

That said, our last government was also rubbish, and we are all screwed.

Sorry about my english.
 
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Outlier

Member
But it is hilarious how so many people on Era are cheering on censorship and government control.

It has been long established those people prefer to live in their fantasized version of reality.

They will handwave/dismiss/ignore the sights and sounds of TRUTH, FACTS, and EVIDENCE, at great cost.
 
This is dumb. It really no different then all the other platforms. If you that sorry about some lies effecting you. Then there must be some truth in them. X is still the same, even before musk took over. Just ppl make it become a bigger deal cause it a political battle ground I guess, so they want some control for sure
 

RAÏSanÏa

Member
A recent article by Fortune about the X(Twitter) buyout. The financial effects, even if small compared to its main market, could propagate through other businesses.

https://fortune.com/2024/08/20/elon-musk-tesla-twitter-leveraged-buyout-debt-banks-barclays/
Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter could go down as the worst leveraged buyout (LBO) deal for banks since the 2008 global financial crisis in the latest worrying sign the deal is proving costly to Tesla shareholders.

While more than half of the $44 billion price tag came from Elon Musk, some $13 billion had to be raised from a consortium of lenders in order not to overwhelm Tesla shareholders after the entrepreneur liquidated billions of dollars in Tesla stock.

Nearly two years on, investment banks have been unable to offload the debt, tying up precious capital and limiting their ability to originate and finance more deals. In fact, no LBO debt has sat longer on balance sheet since the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, according to new information from PitchBook LCD cited by the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

The previous record was 13 months stemming from the 2007 acquisition of car-parts group Tower Automotive by private equity firm Cerberus during the peak of the subprime bubble.
...regrettably...
The data does not provide any indication as to whether X had breached its loan covenants, usually the first sign of distress, and the company did not respond to a Fortune request for comment.
Thanks chiefly to the legacy Twitter LBO debt, Barclays senior M&A team were informed last year their annual compensation would shrink by 40% over the previous year. The cut was so severe that almost a quarter of the bank’s 200-plus managing directors quit once they had collected it.

Musk might still pull a rabbit out of a hat, but X’s financial woes are raising the alarm among Tesla bulls. Last week Halter Ferguson Financial warned that Musk may be forced to sell $1 billion to $2 billion worth of Tesla shares to plug financial cracks emerging at Twitter, now X, with fresh infusions of loss-absorbing equity.
Looking forward to reading some analysis about this ban. Can't imagine the move improves advertiser reach.

If it boosts migration from X is an intriguing consideration.
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
I haven't been keeping up, but in what way is this different from what happened in Turkey when he was more willing to work with the government?
 

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
I haven't been keeping up, but in what way is this different from what happened in Turkey when he was more willing to work with the government?
Because of the politics involved and how this relates to Brazils Trump-like ex president.

Entire topic is embroiled in politics not sure how it really can survive here, much like the last thread this will likely be closed.
 

Guilty_AI

Gold Member
Breaking laws usually does mean being arrested, that’s not really a dictatorship thing lol
That's the thing. Musk didn't break any laws, the judge did. His orders were quite blantantly illegal according to the country's constitution.
 
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Guilty_AI

Gold Member
I haven't been keeping up, but in what way is this different from what happened in Turkey when he was more willing to work with the government?
He was complying with the orders until not too long ago, problem is the orders were blantantly illegal and were progressively getting more and more insane. To obey what the judge wanted them to do, X had to quite literally commit what would be crimes under our laws.

I don't know how turkish law is, but if they had the "right" to do these demands, X would have no choice but to comply. Here though? Like i said, the orders are illegal.
 
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