I don't really know anything about Lula (I wouldn't have known this was Brazil if it wasn't explicitly mentioned, I only know from the Wikipedia page 30 seconds ago that their full name is Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and "Lula" is a nickname), so I can't say if they're "fine" or "evil", but one does not simply get to disregard the implications of censorship (of anyone, let alone a political party) when it happens to be done by a private corporation.
Especially when it's a foreign private corporation that's already deeply suspicious for political interference in multiple nations, as Meta is.
Brazil can very easily block FB from operating there, but FB is a private American company and it can do what it wants on its own platform - it can allow or disallow any content as it sees fit. If Brazil doesn’t want to deal with this then… ban FB. IP block it. But they won’t, because they like leeching off American manpower and ingenuity with no local alternative (just like the Europeans with their [lack of] homegrown technology).
Europe has many of the same issues (I mean seriously aside from Airbus and ASML wtf even goes on over there in terms of actual technological development), and they should do the same - ban FB/ban twitter/ban Google etc. but they never do lol.
But no it’s not an attack on Brazil’s ‘sovereignty’. Brazil chooses to allow Facebook to operate in its jurisdiction and Facebook chooses what content to disallow. The ball is is Brazil’s court: just ban it.
It’s extremely frustrating because we all know what the American big tech firms are at this point (especially Fb/Meta), and yet the only viable current alternatives seem to be from - hilariously - the Chinese. Absolute shit show all around.
If the American tech firms are so bad and so evil why aren’t you banning them from your country?
What you call "I mean seriously aside from Airbus and ASML wtf even goes on over there in terms of actual technological development", Trump calls "a trade deficit" and tries to stop.
(The "deficit" becomes almost, not perfectly but relatively, neutral if you include the digital stuff like FB).
Brazil is not a "little corporation with a fancy flag". Brazil is a democratic republic. The largest in Latin America, and one of the largest in the world.
Do I misunderstand, or are you calling Brazil, the nation whose population is around 214 million, a "little corporation"?
If you become something like public infrastructure you have to act like one or reduce your importance
But this case is something else entirely.
Anyone familiar, to comment?
Zuck famously said, of his users: "dumb fucks".
This would be better, but I guess less anger-tormenting and also you’ll need to translate it yourself: https://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/politica/noticia/2026-09/me...
Lula is against the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Zuck blocks his entire campaign page.
I wonder why?
I often use Study Together which is a large discord server (50k users online) for folks to work and study in groups/body doubles, but someone told me a lot of Brazilians have to use VPN to circumvent the ban.
If the social networks provide no value then ban them. And if they do but they are so harmful then create your own.
A tri polar world technologically would be great.
But it’s actually laughable how much the Europeans complain about the Americans/American big tech while at the same time inventing no alternatives themselves and in fact relying on America for a whole host of shit, notably their defence. AI is another great example where the Europeans won’t cease complaining but don’t have and apparently won’t have a single frontier model of their own. Mistral is the best they’ve got lol.
Europeans love to berate and criticise others for building something but won’t build it themselves (and they still use what’s being built in the end).
Ban those big bad evil American companies or pipe down.
That's like criticising people for complaining about cigarettes when they don't even have their own cigarette companies.
> Ban those big bad evil American companies or pipe down.
That would be stuff like this, in order to give the legal cover needed to resist counterclaims by the USA: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/digital-se...