Musk’s X CAVES, Agrees to Brazilian Censorship Despite Promises
After X(Twitter) and its owner Elon Musk made international headlines by repeatedly affirming that X would not comply with unjust Brazilian government censorship and data demands, X has reportedly caved and will do what it so publicly refused to do. As usual, Musk’s actions are at total variance with his words.
It is true that Musk would no doubt lose a good deal of revenue by submitting to the ban on X in Brazil, but the problem is he has very publicly claimed that he cares more about free speech than money, only to act against his principles multiple times. It is not exactly surprising considering that he is hand-in-glove with the always hypocritical and anti-freedom Chinese Communist Party (CCP), but Musk should still be called out for doing something this week which, mere days ago, he himself called shameful and that X emphatically declared it “simply won’t do.”
Musk had previously argued that the new demands from Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes and co. were actually violations of Brazil’s existing laws and thus could not be complied with. “We do follow the laws in the countries within which we operate. The problem in Brazil is that we were ordered to break the law by ‘the law’ with a gag order that we couldn’t tell anyone about it,” Musk posted Sept. 1, replying to a criticism of X’s pushback against De Moraes.
Musk also tweeted back in August, “The decision to close the 𝕏 office in Brazil was difficult, but, if we had agreed to [Justice]alexandre’s (illegal) secret censorship and private information handover demands, there was no way we could explain our actions without being ashamed.” Yet now he is willing to do the very thing of which he said he would be too ashamed to justify.
X Global Government Affairs was equally clear and determined originally, stating, “The fundamental issue at stake here is that Judge de Moraes demands we break Brazil’s own laws. We simply won’t do that.” But that was then, this is now. The Twitter Files revealed how the company previously helped US government bureaucrats build the censorship industrial complex here, and it appears that the company will be doing the same in Brazil under Musk’s leadership. After all, Musk has complied with outrageous censorship demands from European governments and the Turkish government.