Brazil’s supreme court upholds ban on Elon Musk’s X over ‘illegal conduct’
Brazil’s supreme court upholds ban on Elon Musk’s X over ‘illegal conduct’
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/sep/02/brazils-supreme-court-upholds-x-ban-over-conduct
Refusal to comply with local laws suggests social media company ‘considered itself above the rule of law’, says judge
Members of Brazil’s supreme court have unanimously voted to uphold the ban on X, after Elon Musk’s refusal to comply with local laws led to the social network being blocked in one of its biggest markets.
On Monday, five of the court’s justices were asked to consider Friday’s decision to temporarily banish X from Brazil, where the platform has more than 21 million users. By lunchtime all five had voted in favour of the ban.
Casting his vote in favour of X’s continued suspension, Flávio Dino said the company’s decision to “deliberately” ignore a court order to name a legal representative in Brazil suggested it “considered itself above the rule of law”.
Before Elon acquired Twitter, the platform enforced an one-sided policy of censoring right-wing points of view. It even started actively shielding the left from any criticism, such as when the Hunter Biden Laptop story was blatantly censored so as to not affect Joe Biden's presidential campaign negatively.
What's funny is that there are a slew of articles from 2019 to 2022, before Musk's takeover, talking about a study that found Twitter's algorithm actually had a right wing bias because conservative opinions generated higher engagement (both positive and negative) so it boosted them more than liberal ones.
Also Elon has censored many news stories about himself and his companies since his acquisition. He hasn't stopped censorship, he merely took control of it.
A handful of citations:
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-59011271
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/05/twitter-musk-censors-turkey-election-erdogan
https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-journalists-free-speech-mashable-matt-binder