Elon Musk’s satellite-based internet service provider Starlink has backtracked and announced it will comply with a Brazilian Supreme Court justice’s order to block the billionaire’s social media platform, X.

SAO PAULO (AP) — Elon Musk’s satellite-based internet service provider Starlink backtracked Tuesday and said it will comply with a Brazilian Supreme Court justice’s order to block the billionaire’s social media platform, X.

Starlink said in a statement posted on X that it will heed Justice Alexandre de Moraes’ order despite him having frozen the company’s assets. Previously, it informally told the telecommunications regulator that it would not comply until de Moraes reversed course.

“Regardless of the illegal treatment of Starlink in freezing our assets, we are complying with the order to block access to X in Brazil,” the company statement said. “We continue to pursue all legal avenues, as are others who agree that @alexandre’s recent order violate the Brazilian constitution.”

  • ravhall@discuss.online
    11·
    2 months ago

    Speech that could overthrow a totalitarian regime could fall under that definition, yet I wouldn’t consider it a bad thing.

    • mycodesucks@lemmy.world
      2·
      2 months ago

      You are correct.

      Brazil is not a totalitarian regime. The resistance to deplatforming in this case isn’t the same as, say, resisting deplatforming democracy activists in Taiwan, which X would likely not do.

      The context matters. Brazil is a democratic nation with checks and balances that has defined what it considers illegal speech. X is of course, entitled to disagree with that assessment. And Brazil is free to correctly assess that X is not following its laws and ban it from operating there. That’s all there is to it. If the Brazilian people think the government’s definition of illegal speech is wrong, this government will be booted out in the next election. It’s that simple.

        • mycodesucks@lemmy.world
          1·
          2 months ago

          First of all, who are “they” in this scenario?

          Because I don’t think you mean the Brazilian government, because it’s relatively obvious.

          There is no need to ban or censure speech for reasons of inciting violence if it doesn’t have a big enough audience to actually do that.

          And secondly, Truth Social’s tiny audience is almost completely US citizens, who generally speaking don’t speak or understand Portuguese, and the network doesn’t officially operate in the country in any capacity.