The ban follows a long-running battle between Brazil’s supreme court and Elon Musk. It shows the country will no longer tolerate tech giants ignoring the rule of law.
They were banned for refusing to follow Brazilian laws, specially laws about disinformation. Twitter was banned in Brazil because its actively working as a propaganda outlet.
No, that’s an oversimplification. The judge has been asking the representatives in Brazil to block some accounts that have been spreading disinformation.
The representatives replied to the judge saying they’re just representatives and X/Twitter wouldn’t comply with that request.
In Brazil, if you’re the representative of a company, you have to have the power to comply with Brazil’s laws.
As they were not complying, the judge gave them extra time to comply and mentioned if they didn’t comply, the local president/director/representative would go to jail.
That’s when X/Twitter closed the representation in Brazil.
After that, the only action left available for the judge was to block X/Twitter.
Elon is full of shit but banning “propaganda” sites sets a dangerous precedent. Who decides what qualifies? It’s a slippery slope to censorship. It just sends a wrong message to whoever in charge.
Better approach: Promote critical thinking and media literacy. Empower people to evaluate information themselves.
Free speech isn’t always comfortable, but it’s a foundation for a healthy democracy.
They were banned for refusing to follow Brazilian laws, specially laws about disinformation. Twitter was banned in Brazil because its actively working as a propaganda outlet.
Propaganda = authoritarianism
I think they were banned because they didn’t have a representative in the country that they could serve those allegations to.
No, that’s an oversimplification. The judge has been asking the representatives in Brazil to block some accounts that have been spreading disinformation. The representatives replied to the judge saying they’re just representatives and X/Twitter wouldn’t comply with that request. In Brazil, if you’re the representative of a company, you have to have the power to comply with Brazil’s laws. As they were not complying, the judge gave them extra time to comply and mentioned if they didn’t comply, the local president/director/representative would go to jail. That’s when X/Twitter closed the representation in Brazil.
After that, the only action left available for the judge was to block X/Twitter.
The judge also blocked all bank accounts for Starlink, a different company.
While I think the ban is justified, the power the judge has is definitely fishy too.
Elon is full of shit but banning “propaganda” sites sets a dangerous precedent. Who decides what qualifies? It’s a slippery slope to censorship. It just sends a wrong message to whoever in charge.
Better approach: Promote critical thinking and media literacy. Empower people to evaluate information themselves.
Free speech isn’t always comfortable, but it’s a foundation for a healthy democracy.