This is a screenshot of the most beautiful karma post of 2024.
After having abused his ownership of X for two years, Brazil becomes the first country to simply shut down X.
The legally elected social democratic government of Brazil experienced a January 6 style coup attempt by anti-democratic, hard-right nationalist Bolsonaro in January 2023.
They have since fought a long legal battle to get Musk to shut down X accounts related to this coup.
Musk refused.
So they shut him down.
@randahl
It is absolutely a LOL occasion, and a wonderful warm up to bringing Trump down as well. I love the fact that Musk is frenetically posting all sorts of invectives in all sort of directions.
Unhinged and angry.
And I like that.'
But let's not forget he is also dangerous. He is dangerous for as long as politics are all about ego, power, and greed, and not about taking loving care of people and nature.
Apart from controlling a social media environment that remains one of the largest, he also controls, with effectively zero oversight, what is rapidly becoming an essential communications medium: Starlink.
Even here in Australia, a country that uses technology quite well (yeah, okay, our home broadband access is crappy, thanks to meddling conservatives some 10 years ago), Starlink has inserted itself into our emergency services. The New South Wales volunteer fire service (NSWRFS) is installing Starlink in every tanker, even though we already utilise a pretty damned good trunked radio system that allows comms and data integration with services across the country when utilised properly (ie. when the bureaucrats get out of the way).
Starlink: a system controlled by one man, who is impulsive, egotistical, childish, and holds a grudge when challenged.
@PeterLG
Yes, it is very concerning. To put it mildly. You could already tell before, and then during the Ukraine - Russian war; people depend on it. It can be a good service but they essentially depend on one man who can change his mind screaming 'Fuck you' if things don't go his way, and simply pulls the plug.
The USA would have to nationalise SpaceX if they wanted him out of the game; there's no other viable player at the moment. No US government will do that.
@randahl People seem to forget that US-based tech companies are foreign actors in other countries and interfering in their politics doesn’t have to be tolerated.
The Brazilians essentially succeeded at banning Twitter (I refuse to use its dumb rebrand) where the US has as yet failed to ban TikTok.
@randahl Russia blocked Twitter/X in 2022 for the same reason.
However I don't see how this is a good news. Internet censorship hurts people and creates bad precedent.
Do you want your own country start blocking access to websites left and right and imposing huge fines on their own citizens for attempting to circumvent the blocks?
theguardian.com/technology/art…
"The decision imposes a daily fine of R$50,000 (£6,800) on individuals and companies that attempt to continue using X via VPN."
@shuro @randahl It’s not simple. In a free society, you need to put up with some quantity of unpleasant speech and even hate speech because that’s a price for freedom. At some point, a service may facilitate so much hate speech that it becomes the product.
I can’t say if Twitter has reached that point, but it keeps edging closer to being a hate speech micro blogging platform.
@randahl @birwin They said the same here when they introduced the Internet censorship in 2014. It goes downhill real fast.
Basically what we see here is what I saw numerous times in my own country:
- Some service allows materials government doesn't like
- Then they refuse to follow orders to remove it
- Then they refuse to comply with "the hostage law" (the requirement to have legal representatives in the country which can be harassed)
- Then the government blocks access to the service for their citizens and punishes them for circumventing the censorship
This road leads nowhere good as I can tell you firsthand.
@randahl @osma > Requiring a platform to curb incitement to violence and other criminal activities is not censorship. It is upholding a legal system.
This is exactly what our government says when they ban everything antiwar, LGBT or opposition-related. Twitter was blocked in 2022 with the same justification and now YouTube blockage is underway.
As I said - good luck with that.
@randahl I'm also very uneasy about censorship generally. In Brazil, against all my expectations, this has been happening slowly enough that I dare expect more positive turns instead of worst coming to worst.
As far as I know, control of internet content is more a Moraes thing than something from the government more generally these days, and precedent is flimsy here. The bigger picture seems (to me, maybe naively) more positive than this piece of news seems by itself.
@shuro Lula, the president of Brazil, was elected by a 51 percent majority of Brazilian voters in spite of all the attempts by Bolsonaro to prevent free and and fair elections. He now wants to prevent Bolsonaro from orchestrating a coup through X.
Putin was elected president because of his own success with oppressing all opposition in Russia. And he cracks down on all social media to suppress the free will of the Russian people.
There is a stark difference.
@randahl @shuro
#Lula is the right guy to stand against #Musk. He is the one who said (in 2009) that "#Brazil would choose #freesoftware because we like to make our own food — like #feijoada —with our own recipes and ingredients, and we would not follow #Microsoft bland recipes."
We were on the right public policy track then…
But #ZIRP (zero interest rate policy) for Silicon Valley was something we could not deal with.
@randahl Well, Putin is supported by majority and he indeed wins elections but it is not the point.
The point is that in both cases the government chooses to block access to a huge and diverse platform which affects lives of many. They don't pursue Musk or X judicially in their jurisdiction but rather just block access for their citizens (without asking them by the way - very democratic) and then threaten not Musk but their citizens with considerable punishment if they won't comply.
This doesn't end well.
@randahl @josemurilo I get how it works legally (same happens in Russia).
I still think it is horrible approach. Basically it allows the government to block everything on the Internet. Send a request to any service, they find it unreasonable and ignore, you cut your citizens from it. This will get out of hand.
@randahl @josemurilo I do not. To be clear: I wish Brazil well and I do not mind them prosecuting Musk or X.
However no matter what the system is I find this particular idea of blocking something on the Internet nationwide and threaten citizens with punishment for circumventing it a horrible approach and very prone to misuse.
@randahl @pedrobizbikedu Yes, I hope this works out for you.
I don't use X and I don't like Elon but I hate to see the Internet breaking in pieces and I see it happening a lot lately.
What especially worries me is proposed huge fines for circumventing blocks.
@randahl So Musk's false-news site's viewership in South America is getting a Brazilian…
Geee what a pity.
Censoring BLATANT LIES is a good thing.
@randahl Wait, is it done? It's official?
I'm hoping that it means an influx of users to mastodon from Brazil
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