Topic: censorship in Brazil: Twitter ban and free Starlink service as bank accounts fro (Read 472 times)

Censorship was already hard back in the day, but now despite the tools at their disposal this is even more difficult to do these days, because almost every citizen carries with them a phone with capabilities to record video at an amazing resolution, so no matter how secretive a government may believe their activities are, there is always someone out there ready to film them at a moment’s notice, however it seems many governments are already dropping the pretense of being democratic and they are going full authoritarian on the citizens they govern.

I feel like when you want to manage a dictatorship, communication is the number one thing that you need to control. This is why back in the day there were so many journalists kept getting jailed in dictatorships since that was the only way the whole country could read the same thing at the same time.

Right now of course social media became even bigger, while Journalism still exists, the right to news is not their issue anymore and anyone can break out any news they want as soon as they get it. Meaning that if you want dictatorship, twitter could be trouble for you since anyone can share the wrongdoings that you do. This is why Brazil did this and that famous judge doesn't care what we think of him at all, he doesn't care and will not care.

We should realize that Brazil is going beyond recovery mode, and if they don2t do something about it then we are going to see them have a lot of trouble soon enough, something that would not be irreversible for a long time.

This is creepy. Censorship and dictatorship in its pure form.

Whoever censures freedom of speech is afraid of the truth.

I can just open businessinsider here without subscription. Using Firefox qith high privacy settinga and ublock (I think it bypass most paywalls)

If you see a pay wall, usually opening reader mode opens it normally lol

Unfortunately, I personally can't read the article because it requires a subscription - but I found another news source explaining that VPN users risk an $8900 fine if they access X despite the ban. I honestly thought that the authorities would not go that far, because now it looks like Brazil is behind some kind of state firewall like the one that exists in China and Russia.

Personally, X does not work through Tor for me, but I also see that there is an onion version - which still gives a warning. It would be much safer (and cheaper) if people could access the service with Tor as well

I'm responding as if the discussion is on the abstract level. Between a government ordering a private company to do this and that and a private company telling a government to stop ordering them what to do because they're doing what's right, I believe the former is the lesser evil. I'm calling it evil with the assumption that it is an absolute rule which is susceptible to abuses, could be used to silence critics, and so on. Ideally, it should be a smooth cooperation between the two, both making compromises if necessary.

Apparently, yeah, X is less powerful than Brazil's government at least in its jurisdiction. It should be that way. I'm interested, however, to know whether the people on the ground are really barred from using X or there remains options that could circumvent the ban.

I still don't think this is the lesser evil.

Big corporations are a big slice of the society. If a corporation is big, ia because the society pays for their service and like it (at least in this specific case)

Governments should always remember that their power comes from the society,  not the other way around.

Elon musk is not asking the government to bow down, he is just saying that the government doesn't have the power to do whatever they want, and that's true and a fundamental part of the democracy. In democracies the society must counter balance estate power (this usually done by the Parlament, which theoretically represents the people)

X is much less powerful than the estate, this is way it is banned now

I do agree that censorship is something that is very bad, but at the same time Brazil is going through some historical issues. While you may not call it a civil war yet, the last two elections has been quite doubtful as well.

Latest was literally 50.90 vs 49.10 difference, that's 1.8 difference in elections, if something like that happened in the USA, I am sure that we would see people with guns on the streets for sure, hell it didn't even had to be that close, it was a huge difference, and yet they still stormed the capitol building. In the end, I feel like they are trying to do something, right or wrong, to calm down the people and it had the opposite impact that they assumed it would.

The idea was to shut down Twitter so people wouldn't talk politics already and stopped getting too different from each other. While some may think that what's going on is hated right now, it is not, half of the nation hates it, the other half supports it, obvious from the election results as you can see.

Or you agree with it? We're basically saying the same thing. I detest governments for many reasons, but society would be far more chaotic if private companies are so powerful and influential they could sway governments whichever direction they wish. Again, at first I thought this is just a case of a government trying to make a private entity bend a knee, but then I realized it must be the lesser evil. If it's the other way around, that private companies are making governments bow down to them, the order of things would be upended.

I disagree with this.

Elon musk cannot enter into my house  , search my stuff and send me to jail. The government can.

Estate are more powerful than corporations.  They even have more money

Many people say Putin is the richest man alive

Your opinion somehow swayed mine. I started with a thought that certain local powers simply want international players to bow down to them and their demands. That doesn't seem nice. However, I guess the contrary is more evil, that rich and powerful private companies are forcing governments and their laws to bow down to their own wishes. The world might be far more chaotic that way.

Anyway, it is actually much worse if these elite companies make their own entitled discernment as to which powers to follow and which not to follow, a tendency that many influential global companies have shown. It brings to mind the case of Binance, for example, that is all too willing to comply with regulations of certain powerful countries, bend a knee, and lick their asses while also ignoring the ones set by less powerful states at same time.

I believe this is one of the benefits of the rise of social media platforms. Not only popular personalities can voice out their opinions but even regular individuals as they can just post basically anything they want to say to the public. However, people should also be aware of what they are disclosing to the public as their privacy is at stake. Still, it is better to minimize what you share to the public as you don't know who are lurking your life that it can danger your privacy.


As we can see, he is now like the voice of the oppressed people. He doesn't care who he is in battle with as long as he is saying what he feels the right things to say to the masses. Though everyone has their own opinions but I believe, he has big role in displaying what is free speech these days.

Sadly brazil is in brics  , a bunch of dictatorships and some democracies. But we are still a democracy.

X censorship was a big surprise for all Brazilians. I think it can still be reverted , as other supreme court ministers will vote for it to stay banned or not.

But for now it is banned ... sadly

Brazilian use of vpn skyrocketed about 500%
https://www.businessinsider.com/vpn-demand-surges-brazil-x-banned-legal-threats-fines-2024-9

Is this a way of silencing the people of Brazil from what to say and do? It's always the government and it's either you do it their way or you go down, they don't mind going extra miles to take down an individual left alone a country or state.
Besides this platform is created for various purposes and entertainment and people use it to fit business purposes online it's really beneficial to the nation so why will they take it down.
Of a Truth some countries ain't using X anymore due to some reasons by the government and it's affected them a whole lot, what's Elon musk saying and doing I think this issue of silencing people's freedom should be apprehended speedily.

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1829308905177956551?lang=en

Elon has been writing a lot about Brazil lately, mostly about how the politicians in power and this clown judge are breaking their laws. And he shares very interesting memes by the way.

The fight for freedom of speech is increasing all over the world, which is good I think... states and politicians really should (and must) be much more transparent. It will be interesting to see what happens in the end, I'm rooting for X and Elon to win this war. It will be a great victory for all of us, especially for people who live in Brazil and want to have the freedom to say what they think without fear of being punished for it.

It just hit me... what if you want to order a Starlink terminal? They can't receive payments for that either, so is that even possible still? It looks like only internet connectivity for the units already in Brazil is going to stay freely available.


WeChat is so difficult to sign up for, and last time I checked you need to get your account verified by *another* WeChat user in order to even get started, so that's a non-starter for me.

Everything is in Chinese anyway, so I don't imagine it catching any sort of traction in a country like Brazil.

Wouldn't agree more , and from how things are unfolding of late, I think Elon Musk is in the right place at the right time...so much oppression going on in some of these countries and unfortunately Musk has to meddle in some of the politics going on just to give people the glimpse of hope and freedom.

Lol see what you did there...

But it wouldn't be a bad idea to have it if at the Chinese version features can be extended to Brazil.. though Russia might not like such a development as it might look like China is in the driving seat.

We’re going to see governments trying their upmost hardest to eradicate free speech & censor people. Elon Musk buying X is a real positive for free speech, we can not allow those in power to rule by communism. I haven’t always been the biggest Elon fan but he is the hero we need right now.

And replace them with what? WeChat? 


This Alexandre de Moraes guy just went and is blocking all of Elon's companies that operate in Brazil, including services that have nothing to do with the platform in question (X).

It does not seem like something a normal judge would do. A normal judge would simply order X to block the content or face being banned by ISPs, but this guy actually took it one step further and is trying to cripple SpaceX too. Maybe Tesla will be next.

Unfortunately Brazil has now entered the dictatorship regime. When the rulling government doesn't like anyone, they try to block their voice from being heard. That's a sign of flawed democracy and unfortunately Brazil is officially a flawed democracy now.

I really appreciate the stance of Elon Musk to not bown before the government and risked his business in this huge market. Still someone has the spine to stand up for the right things.

If I understood correctly, Mr. Mars refused to block some profiles that someone from Brazil is asking to be blocked because of their political views? Regardless of the fact that I don't have a good opinion of him, this time I agree that he did the right thing because I would have done the same.

With these moves, the Brazilian government is only doing harm to itself and its people, and they turned out to be naive because instead of a ban, people got free internet. Someone has already asked a similar question, but those who use satellite internet should not be subject to censorship - I'm honestly not sure if any government can do anything about the availability of satellite internet except to ban the official sale of equipment and the company's official account in a domestic bank.

While I don't agree with censorship, Musk is a scumbag playing political games and stirring up controversy in other countries for his own ego. The massive drop in content moderation has only happened because he opened his big mouth and formed a contract to buy Twitter at a massively inflated price, so had to cut back huge amounts of staff that were doing a pretty good job before. He is using Twitter as a political propaganda tool, so nobody should be surprised when governments decide to push back and frankly there are other places out there that will follow the law. He is creating the downfall of Twitter, sorry X - who even thought that namechange was a good idea? He will lose a lot of money because of his own self centered actions.

It's a dispute of power and ego between Elon Musk and Alexandre de Moraes (the brazilian supreme court judge). Since 2019, de Moraes is taking the conflict between the former Bolsonaro's government (which started as a legit cause in the beginning) and the supreme court as a personal matter. A large portion of brazilian population has been unsatisfied with the supreme court since a long time ago and Bolsonaro used this feeling of indignation in the favour of his political clan.

However, Bolsonaro didn't take the war against the supreme court until the end, because his son was involved in shady schemes, so he retreated and delivered his followers in the devil's mouth. In exchange, investigations against his family were shelved. Right after the election of 2022 which Lula won, de Moraes started punishing brazilians who were protesting against the election's results, inflamed by Bolsonaro and allied politicians. Although Bolsonaro and his hard core retreated cowardly.

Many were arrested and fined. And since Twitter was one of the main channels where those protesters came together, organized themselves and raised the moral of the protests, de Moraes focused on censoring this specific social media (besides Telegram). Probably Musk saw on it an opportunity to shine and rise politically, as he has been doing by involving himself with politicians from many different countries.

People are in constant need of idolizing someone, and Musk desires to be idolized, so both sides of this equation combined business with pleasure... There aren't freedom warriors or paladins of justice in this story. Only wicked, corrupt and megalomaniac men manipulating and subjugating the sheep to reach their personal goals of dominance.

No doubt having ban on Twitter has never been dictatorship with freezing bank accounts and not allowing peoples right of having things which is their right is also case in Brazil because things are getting the worst day by day in last one decade they are facing too many challenges Covid bring them on panic because still trying from recovery, but it's not working even now crime ratio is also at his highs which are also main factor of struggling economy.

Brazilian court is having ban on starlink with now they are giving few other orders as well because they are feeling not good in this case and also having strict orders about Elon Musk who is trying to have his own advantage in these crises as he always tries in different regions and countries during problems which never helps anyone just increase his revenue and money.

My thinking is like this.

In any country, there are always problems and differences among nations are how good or bad, better or worse their governments handle issues in their territories. It makes different and benefit their citizens.

If things we're considering is censorship, corruptions, I can say it's everywhere on this planet, in all countries. Deep states are existing in all countries but if you have multiple parties in one country, it's better than only one, because it creates natural space for controversy, counter fight against the worse things in the country. By this, the Western countries provide better chances and human rights for citizens to fight for what they want.

In nations like China, Russia, North Korea, it's nearly no opportunity for citizens to fight for their freedom and the people have no ways to show their will.

I don't think I would call a government a dictatorship just because they want twitter to be banned. But if the government is truly freeze people bank accounts then it's truly dictatorship, people will lose their job and there will be chaos just because an X profile. Moreover the Brazil's government is also not that smart, if the problem is they want to block some twitter profiles, they could just pay some bot farmer to mass report the twitter profiles as how it usually done by other governments.

I am not supporting Russian and Chinese policies and I am not familiar with what's going on in Brazil enough to give an opinion on that matter.

The problem I have is when people think censorship and dictatorship only exists in China, Russia, Venezuela and North Korea whereas the biggest censorship is happening in the West as I already mentioned some examples, specially in US where Musk resides!

And worse of all is when I see Elon Musk who is the last person who is allowed to talk about censorship is running his mouth like this! Twitter is known for cooperating with governments (mainly US gov.) in silencing people or worse in running CIA coup and terrorist operations in other countries.

I don't think that is exactly the case in my opinion.
Many Brazilians share your opinion,  all of them Lula supporters and they usually also support Russia and China policies.

The other point of view, imo, iI this particular case, everything looks against brazilian law. This is what musk is saying: what Moraes asks is against the laws so he won't comply.

The most absurd fact is the blocking of starlink accounts,  which is totally unrelated to the case. An obvious personal use of the Supreme court.

Moraes is blocking only right wing candidates.

He is accused of illegal use of the Supreme court to hunt down Bolsonaro(former president) supporters:
https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/politica/mensagens-apontam-que-moraes-usou-tse-para-investigar-bolsonaristas-diz-jornal/

The fact is that starlink is on the way of getting banned and Brazil joined the dictatorships club of banned Twitter.
You can also see that Moraes is worried about the elections.

https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/politica/moraes-afirma-em-decisao-que-o-x-representa-gravissimo-risco-as-eleicoes-municipais/

You can google translate those articles, from CNN which is not a right wing portal.

I don't know how the situation with network providers is things in Brazil but if it's anything like mine, Starlink is something that should be encouraged by the government. Starlink makes communication easier. You can get an internet connection from anywhere and it's not as expensive as I thought it would before it was launched.

I'm more confused as to why the government will go after Starlink. Starlink and X are two different companies. It's really a bad move for them to go after another company simply because it belongs to the same person. I know it's just a way for them to flex their muscle but it sends the wrong messages to other investors.

That is a twisted fact though. Any country bans any social media platform that doesn't obey their laws. US banned TikTok exactly because of that. There is no difference between that ban and Brazil banning X.

Besides, the reason is very clear. When Brazilian authorities demand X to censor a content, Musk refuses. However when other authorities like US authorities, UK, French, German, etc. authorities demand censorship, Musk obeys. So X is banned in Brazil while it is not banned in US, UK, France, Germany, etc.

Look at how Twitter complied with censorship in all these countries over the years like during the anti-vax protests in Canada, the anti-police brutality in France after the French police murdered a child in broad daylight, and so on.
If Musk were truly pro-free-speech he would have never shut down all those other accounts...

It is, the current brazil government action about freezing some company account will put a dent onto their reputation for a long term, they are creating bad reputation right now and they excels at that.

since foreign investment largely consider the political stability and how good the regulation is to protect their rights, I think this is a really bad move.
not to mention starlink is honestly a really good advancement that could allow remote places to have internet, could definitely helps a lot of country including brazil.

Companies are required to follow lawful orders and the Judge believes he makes the law (he does have backing of other judges also) so X is obliged to do as he says.   Most good laws have to be confirmed properly, a single judge can be overruled.   If we presume the restriction of free speech will lead to the government being a bad one and it is voted out next election then X is justified in fighting the order.

   I think Google and a few other companies follow every order they are given but that might be slightly different when its not absolutely a platform to represent the personal views of a population.  It is unlikely Elon Musk makes that much money from running and eventually selling X, he paid too much really but to censor users would hand their business to competitors, long term he is probably doing the right thing regardless of moral arguments.  Theres always a way past censorship, technically I doubt Brazil will succeed in restricting thoughts and even speech.

Its probably relevant to mention the UK has not banned any platform but has given jail sentences to users for views similar to which Brazil might be banning, I think its quite similar.

Elon Musk and his company have done nothing wrong. The Brazilian government is just attacking him because he refused to sensor the supporters of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. The government of Brazil is asking Elon Musk to break the law of the land which promotes free speech. I support Elon and I also salute his boldness to stand for freedom.

X and Starlink will lose the revenue they get from Brazil since about 20 million use Twitter, but the government will also suffer some effects. Many people will lose their source of revenue and that will affect the Brazilian economy. This ban will also scare investors away from Brazil. Firms will not like to invest in a country where their investments are not safe. Many businesses that depend on X might begin to move to neighboring countries.

Imposing a fine of R$50,000 (£6,700) on companies or individuals that use VPN to access X is the highest form of judicial or political rascality. This is not the first time a social media platform has been attacked by this present government. Telegram also faced a temporary ban last year.

I bet that Musk bought Twitter because he was bored and wanted massive fun.

It's great that Starlink will be free in Brazil until this case is solved but can't the Brazilian government ban using of Starlink? Can't they ban Starlink IPs? I mean that it should be possible or am I wrong and that's impossible?

People should fight for their freedom, it's out of control what so many corrupt politicians do with their society once they get their hands on power. It's good that Musk does this and publicly makes fun of him because this again means that freedom of speech exists on Twitter.

Yes, Brazil is part of the BRICS. Btw the president of Russia, Vladimer Putin (Russia is a part of BRICS too) praised Elon Musk recently, he likes him.

There is nothing that the government loves more than censorship, and when they don't get their way like they didn't when X refused to censor users on their platform, they go ahead to use their power to completely silence everyone. X was banned in my country a few years ago, but that ban was later lifted, X is a platform where people are "free" to share things about their country that they wouldn't be able to post in other social media platforms, hence why some governments might be strongly against the platform and by extension, free speech.

Isn't Brazil part of BRICS??

I think it's obvious that the BRICS way is to remove any player close to the West and Elon Musk happens to be that player in the social space and technological space..so no suprises here 

But one thing these dictatorial moves have is forcing people to ask what are they trying to hide, who are they trying to silence..and sooner or later  so rebellion starts and before you know it it's a civil war at hand and in the year 2024 such is unacceptable..let those greedy power hungry guys find better things to do with their lives as they will be seen as Criminals by ICC when the time comes.

Issues like this will definitely take food from the table of many, and some people will definitely lose their jobs, but the question is who will lose the most if Brazilians lose their jobs? That will have an effect on the Brazilian economy, so it's not only Musk that needs to consider their decision but also the Brazilian government needs to think about the economic implications.
 
But what professional step will you want the owner of Twitter to take when, if we check this very well, the decision for banning X in Brazil should be to limit the freedom of their citizens, restricting them from free speech?

You know the government usually use this strategy to silent and mute people having a discussion towards their political views or argument against the opposite parties maybe there could be a pressing matters that needs urgent attention and they are not doing anything about it. Like you said this is what happened exactly 3-4 years now when Nigerian Government ban her citizens from using twitter to attack against political debates but after all every when the situation was calm it was reopened again.

I just saw this update on Twitter. I had no idea this happened. It's funny because whenever governments do this, you just know they want to keep some people quiet. Twitter is not an illegal app, it's just an app where people discuss and debate ideas while getting political, entertainment and sports updates, so I see no reason why a fair government should ban it.
I remember when the government of Nigeria banned Twitter a couple of years ago. It was to crush the people who stood up against the government, and Twitter was a great place for them to discuss and make plans since you cannot go to the radio stations or TV channels to make announcements.

Also, on what grounds did they seize Starlink's account? Do they have a right to just do that when the company didn't break any laws?
These are the kind of scenarios that discourage foreign investors.

Elon musk should try and do more to De-escalate the issue of Starlink in Brazil instead of making memes on his X handle. Issues like this will cause job losses for locals in Brazil, so the least he could do is to show a high level of professionalism as a chief executive officer of both X and Starlink, because I heard the Brazilian government has even gone as far as to place a fine on any Brazilian that uses VPN to bypass their local network to log into X because of this matter on ground, the Brazilian supreme court has shown seriousness, so should Elon musk also do.

Another step towards censorship & the people being controlled by communists, cosplaying as a government. These liberal leaders are going to destroy civilisation as we know it. I am worried about the future with these WEF plants trying to control every aspect of our lives. Resist with every ounce of your being.

Twitter was banned in Brazil yesterday,  and starlink bank accounts frozen, as Supreme Court minister tried to block right wing profiles and musk refused.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/lula-says-musk-must-respect-brazils-top-court-x-braces-shutdown-2024-08-30/

Strange as it may sound, brazil now joins a group of selected dictatorships where X is banned: China, Rússia, Venezuela, north Korea..

Musk made memes of such supreme minister:





And starlink is now free for every brazilian citizen for now, while their bank accounts are frozen

https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/politica/musk-diz-que-servico-do-starlink-sera-gratuito-em-meio-a-imbroglio-no-brasil/