Brazil Bans X ⇥ nucleo.jor.br

Sérgio Spagnuolo, Sofia Schurig, and Pedro Nakamura, Núcleo:

A Supreme Court Justice ordered, on Friday (August 30, 2024), the complete suspension of all access to X (formerly Twitter) across the entire Brazilian territory, in an unprecedented ruling against the social platform.

[…]

In a ruling issued on the afternoon of Aug. 31, Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered the president of Brazil’s telecom regulator, Anatel, Carlos Manuel Baigorri, to ensure that necessary measures are taken and that internet companies are notified to block the application within 24 hours.

An un-bylined report from Al Jazeera:

At the core of the dispute, de Moraes argues that Musk refused earlier this year to block accounts responsible for the spread of fake news, hate speech and attacks on the rule of law.

At the time, Musk denounced the order as censorship and responded by closing the company’s offices in Brazil while ensuring the platform was still available in the country.

Mike Masnick, Techdirt:

And, of course, as a reminder, before Elon took over Twitter (but while he was in a legal fight about it), he accused the company of violating the agreement because of its legal fight against the Modi government over their censorship demands. I know it’s long forgotten now, but one of the excuses Elon used in trying to kill the Twitter deal was that the company was fighting too hard to protect free speech in India.

And then, once he took over, he not only caved immediately to Modi’s demands, he agreed to block the content that the Modi government ordered blocked globally, not just in India.

So Elon isn’t even consistent on this point. He folds to governments when he likes the leadership and fights them when he doesn’t. It’s not a principled stance. It’s a cynical, opportunistic one.

This is being compared by some to the arrest of Pavel Durov but, again, I am not sure I see direct parallels. This Brazilian law seems, from my Canadian perspective, more onerous and restrictive than those from most other liberal democracies. But I do not know much of anything about Brazilian policy, and perhaps this is in line with local expectations.

This is probably not the reason Bluesky wanted for growing by two million new users in one week.