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.
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. - Source
Brazilian here. There seems to be some people here that doesnt know or understand exactly what is going on, so ill try to summarize the events:
Firstly, i must say that in Brazil, the law ALLOWS for freedom of expression, so any judicial decision that asks for censorship is AGAINST the law.
1 - the high court judge sees people on X saying bad things against and making fun of the government and the high court, and asks elon to remove these people from the platform. This was a thing back when elon was not the ceo. Elon refuses.
2 - the high court judge then threatens to sue and imprison ( tough not explicitally) the representants of X on Brazil.
3 - elon removes the X office from brazil so that the brazilian X workers are not arrested.
4 - the high court judge obligates elon to appoint a legal representative in Brazil, and threatens to fine the company and confiscate its assets.
5 - elon ignores and makes fun of him.
6 - the high court judge freezes accounts and confiscate/blocks all of elons assets in Brazil ( including stsrlink satellites) in a decision that is literally AGAINST THE LAW, and says that any company or individual that tries to circumvent his decision( we are good at circumventing the law here) can be subject to a very large fine.
Things are so bad here with this court judge and the supreme court that people openly say they are afraid to speak because of them. It became kind of a running joke among television show hosts and youtubers/podcasters. They have to be very careful when talking about this stuff otherwise there is a risk of being sued or in some cases imprisoned.
There is much more to the story, especially Xandaos story (the high court judge that made these decisions) but ill save it for another post.
Ps. I dont advocate for either side of the political spectrum.
In 2017 Lula da Silva was sentenced to nearly 10 years in prison for corruption, they let him out so he could run for president in the election against Jair Bolsonaro and he won with 50.9%, Jair Bolsonaro was against the covid narrative, he was also stabbed in the abdomen in 2018 while campaigning and almost killed, you can’t make this shit up.
Ahh I remember the days when we could speak freely and not worry about hurting weak minded people’s feelings. It’s free speech weather you like what is being said or not.
The freedom on internet is under attack. This is not about fake news and things like that. The elite just don’t want that the people are whispering to eachoter. They want just full controll and dictate the naritive. This is why the old (pre internet) media is so on the hand of the goverments. they allways where mouthpieces of the goverments.
Justice Voldemort, I mean, Moraes, just revoked the VPN part. Besides being technically… challenging to enforce that, to say the least, I think that he received some quick reprimand from hot shots in the Brazilian deep state.
Thing is, really big companies in Brazil, in particular large banks, routinely use VPNs as part of their IT security. VPN is a security tool, primarily. And Moraes is such a dunce that he actually commanded Google and Apple to remove all VPN software from their stores.
For those who don’t know, Big Banking in Brazil actively supported Lula’s election - specially the Setúbal family from the Itaú conglomerate. And they did so for good reason: according to Lula himself, banks never had so much profit like during his first two terms.
I know, it may sound weird for a “lefty” politician to admit that, but Brazilian politics sounds like a South Park episode dubbed in Portuguese.
In order to ban accessing X with VPN, one has to ban VPNs altogether, as there’s no way for them to know what exactly are you accessing, just that you’re using a VPN (unless you have a DNS leak, of course).
Brazil is a third world shit hole. Just buy PBR shares put the dividend on drip and let the government pay you while keeping their citizens living in poverty.
The title is very deceptive (on par for current day NYT of course). It’s not about what can be said online, it’s that the Brazilian government, through their high court dictatorial judge is telling X to remove accounts of its political critics, and then having X lie to them about why they are being kicked off (Terms of Service violations etc).