Starlink's financial assets frozen in Brazil(twitter.com) |
Starlink's financial assets frozen in Brazil(twitter.com) |
(The twitter link isn't working for me, it only shows an error message followed by a reload link, so I don't know whether it has a link to a copy of the official order.)
If you want to attract business you have to create a reliable and fair system that people can trust in. Once you break that, it is near impossible to regain.
Heck, Americans don't even agree with each other what those things mean in contexts like this.
If Starlink/Twitter/X doesn’t want to do business in BR or comply with local laws, then they are bound to suffer consequences (losing audience or assets seized).
(In case it isn't obvious: I'm not a lawyer, I've not really considered this in any depth beyond some other news sources besides this tweet, and this is a totally noob question that may have an answer in literally lawschool 101).
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/brazil-supreme-court-just...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malfeasance_in_office
Basically a wilful misconduct.
However the balance of powers in Brazil are different from common law, or are corrupted, so we see what comes out of this.
Plus this has repercussions for people in other countries that want to restrict freedom of speech and strong arm social media, and is watched by governments.
Plus this is just tech news, you can post 'why do we care' to pretty much any other story on the front page.
I also see a billionaire strong arming a sovereign nation to push their propaganda machine down their throat.
It is unsurprising to see somebody that’s actively trying to push the envelope about a country’s sovereignty be hit with sanctions on their business operations inside said country.
1 https://apnews.com/article/brazil-musk-x-twitter-moraes-bef0...
2 https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/elon-musk-posts-ai-phot...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41281756
In the practical sense, Twitter is the marketing arm of all his other companies. My theory was that he was acting out belligerently against the Brazillian government because his other companies had minimal or no presence in Brazil. Didn't think of Starlink presence frankly.
Regardless, since he himself uses Twitter as quid pro quo with other governments, I'm guessing he saw this move a mile away.
Banning products and services is punishment to the users too. Would you ban Paracetamol if the CEO did something bad?
Brazilians deserve better.
https://www-gazetadopovo-com-br.translate.goog/vida-e-cidada...
Furthermore, instead of banning the accounts upfront, for disputed casese, it would seem to be a fair to have court process for the people involved and let them defend their behaviour.
> Last week, the Supreme Court justices ruled on six appeals filed by Twitter, Telegram, TikTok, Google (owner of YouTube) and Meta (the group that controls Facebook and Instagram) against Moraes' decision in a virtual session. They all unanimously considered that blocking all channels, profiles and accounts of a person or party is an act of prior censorship, something expressly prohibited by the Constitution and also clearly rejected by the Internet Civil Rights Framework, in respect of freedom of expression.
One could reasonably also argue that the drop-off of advertising to X is itself a sign of lack of trust in Musk's decision making process, his rules, and his reliability.
(And he bought Twitter while claiming Twitter's rules were unfair; as you say, no common agreement).
Let me call a judge to report your misinformation.
I meant hundreds, obviously. Typo is still not ilegal :(
Merely having no office in some country not sufficient, for the same reason it wasn't sufficient for preventing New Zealand based Kim Dotcom to be prosecuted (and his Hong Kong-based Mega Upload domain to be seized) by the USA.
Or how X sued Media Matters in Texas before X moved there and despite Media Matters not being based there: https://www.threads.net/@sherrilynifill/post/Cz5Im7VONzd
Or all the defamation suits against US citizens filed in the UK on the grounds that being published on the internet counted as if it was published in the UK, forcing the US (Federal and State) to pass laws preventing payment of penalties in such cases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel_tourism
Edit:
Just found an interesting claim, thought I cannot verify it myself:
"Notably, Brazilian law necessitates all internet businesses to have a legal representative in the country who is authorised to receive judicial orders and respond legally." - https://www.opindia.com/2024/08/moraes-is-the-dictator-of-br...
and
"Under Brazilian law, social networks must have a representative to receive and consider government takedown notices about political misinformation. X has no such person after closing down its Brazil office. Moraes gave the X platform 24 hours to name a new legal representative or face a nationwide suspension." - https://www.siliconrepublic.com/business/x-brazil-suspension...
Even Elon’s weird definition where you can say anything but you can’t criticize anything he’s ever said, thought, or done.
From where I'm standing, this is legal security - not the opposite. In fact, I don't know if the law would allow it, but morally I would be fine with Musk being given a prison order or other sanctions for using such artifices in an attempt to evade justice.
He owns 42% share. What about the other owners who hold the other 58%? What have they done to deserve their assets seized?
I can't speak to SpaceX shareholders because they are private, but of the public Tesla that's also associated with Musk, there are shareholders who want him out because his public behaviour is interfering with the business interests, and that argument will gain weight as a result of stuff like this.
Is that "deserved" depends a great deal about how you model the entire world, but activists investors are a thing and they do fight company management.
The only time they tried to do tracking on where these posts and sockpuppets were coming from, they ended up in Israel (this is a common practice, I'm assuming to make tracing and legal action more difficult. In Portugal the bots come from Angola).
Its clear that the same disinformation farms that are running in the US were duplicated to Brazil, by the same people (Bob Mercer / Steve Bannon). Proof of that was of course, the deeply personal relationship between Bannon and the Bolsonaro family (when he was out of jail he would visit all the time), and the faux January 6th that was replicated in Brazil after Bolsonaro's defeat.
You have to understand that the population of Brazil has A LOT less education than the population in the US or Europe. They are far more malleable to disinformation.
One of the worse examples I can think of is the disinformation campaign that was activated after the murder of Marielle Franco, who was tagged in fake photos with local Rio drug dealers - while she was still dead inside her car. So a few minutes after the murder, you had a giant disinformation campaign launched. Since it was so fast, the only reasonable conclusion is the murderers control a disinformation bot/sockpuppet farm.
AFAICT, Starlink complies with local regulations in the countries it operates in, including blocking access to specific IP prefixes and/or declining to default resolve DNS entries for specific domains.
IANAL but I'm pretty sure this is legal ground enough (plus all the shit Musk spits on Twitter, attacking Brazil and its institutions, a criminal offense in Brazil, from his ivory tower in Texas) to solicit a block of Starlink Holdings assets.
There are plenty of reasons out there to justify these actions and you can be sure Moraes will find them.
EDIT: Musk said this in April during Twitter Files Brazil.
Source? That's super material (if true).
The judge doing this may be, or may not be, as authoritianism is neither necessary nor sufficient as a cause nor this result as a consequence.
https://www.estadao.com.br/politica/bloqueio-de-contas-da-st...
If the general public learns how things could be better with less corruption, then the world is slightly better off.
I see this sentiment almost everywhere in the world: people rightfully afraid of their own governments and willfully grant influence over their country to the foreign and often enemy state.
This is a systems problem with positive feedback loop, which means that whoever wins will have all the influence and control over the population over time.
And a lot of people see no problem with the fact that it can be the geopolitical enemy until it is too late.
I don’t know the situation in Brazil, but I see this happening over and over in my part of the world.
In Brazil the ruling party (and also the "opposition") are enamored with the Chinese model and as such Musk influence is much preferable and is a balance force in the current political system. If X is blocked in Brazil it will join the select roll of Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan, Myanmar, North Korea, Venezuela and Turkmenistan.
No, I don’t assume that. I am very well aware that the reality is much more complex.
Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea are using Twitter very effectively to divide people in targeted countries. From what I see, Musk is using free speech to effectively help these states achieve their goals. And personally, I don't know yet why he is doing that.
Twitter is no longer an answer to fighting authoritarianism. It was in the previous decade, but that time is gone now.
No more positive change is driven by the Twitter and similar platforms, it is more of divisive and destructive propaganda machine.
I personally observe some of his viral tweet to be deleted later multiple times.
At some point I had a burst of motivation to start writing a bot to keep track of all the stuff he deleted for people like you to observe, but was quickly disgusted to waste any time to be on top of the argument with some stranger.
So yeah, without google or other search engine's ability to index the whole twitter, everything is written there is hearsay I guess.
You talk of Musk but he is a drop in the ocean of foreigners influencing the domestic information sphere. Let's ban Instagram, Youtube and all other foreign platforms, let's ban the Internet and have a country-wide intranet, let's ban all foreign NGOs and think tanks, let's ban Soros (talking about politically active billionaires), let's ban foreign news agencies and journalists, bye bye CNN, DW, BBC, etc. I suspect the only reason you're isolating Musk is because of the ongoing US cultural war and you being team blue.
Of course we should have laws for all of them to follow.
Isn’t that obvious? No-one gives CNN a free pass to broadcast whatever they want on the sovereign territory of any state.
The same applies to other entities from your list: there should be no difference between Soros, Musk, Zuckerberg or some NGO in terms of following state rules.