App stores, VPNs, providers are required to comply with the censorship.
Users who use VPNs and other means to circumvent censorship are subject to 50.000 BRL (~8.9K USD) daily fine.
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Regarding the Twitter block, as I’m informed, it makes sense what they asked for, it is according to law and not against freedom of speech.
For the 2nd thing though, I’m more worried. I do use my VPN provider’s settings to block access to social networks, but I think it shouldn’t be something government will mandate
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That’s the worst part. If the VPN providers refuse to comply - which most, or at least the “good guys”, will, then they will probably be blocked as well. If that happens, then Tor will be the only way to access the web privately. Until they block it as well, that is…
Also, “freedom of speech” doesn’t exist in the same way in Brazil as it does in the US. Not all speech is protected from legal repercussions.
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This is definitely good move. Especially considering all the propaganda that spreads on X like fire.
In fact X should be banned even through VPN
To be clear: Apple and Google were told to remove all VPN apps from their app stores. Individuals who use VPNs to circumvent the X ban will be subject to 10.000 usd fines per day.
This is an awful decision.
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Seems like he went back on this, fortunately.
But, not on the fines for bypassing censorship. So, if you have an account on Twitter and live in Brazil then it better not have your real name on it.
worldwide or in Brazil only?
Slavery in the US was also in accordance with the law. Laws are not always fair.
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Brazil only, he couldn’t tell them to remove it globally.
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Brazil may have banned X as a way to shift media and public focus from ongoing issues in the country. This tactic is reminiscent of what happened in Türkiye a few weeks ago. While the official reason for banning Instagram was non-compliance with Turkish laws, it effectively diverted attention from the government’s recent price increases and other significant problems.
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Yes, but this law states that international corporation doing business in Brazil has to have legal representative there. Just that, and Musk says that’s an issue. There are over 20 million twitter users there, and if I were owner of a company with 20 million users in one country, I would for sure do much more to have presence there, local support, maybe even development, etc. But we all know this has nothing with freedom (of speech), users’ rights, making good service or whatever he talks about now,
So I don’t think this law itself is a problem, and for sure wouldn’t compare its requirements to slavery
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They used to have an office in Brazil, but they shut it down recently because the government was allegedly threatening their employees with legal action/jailtime if Twitter were to not comply with further mandated censorship.
Musk didn’t want his employees arrested and doesn’t want to comply with Brazil’s mandated censorship any further, so he fired the people here and left, and as a consequence Brazil banned Twitter. So yes, it is a “freedom of speech issue”. The STF doesn’t want certain people to have a voice on the internet. Ofc that isn’t to say that I think Twitter is a very “free” place, but that’s the gist of the current situation.
EDIT: small update on the situation - the national organization of lawyers (OAB) is contesting the decision to fine anyone using a VPN for censorship circumvention, because this part (according to the oab) is illegal. Source.
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This is your side of the story.
So good soul.
It is politics, it has sides, and honest I’m not going to engage beyond of this. This is a sensitive field and things will escalate from this point.
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As I read, it was not about censorship, but providing user information on committed crimes. The same thing they didn’t mind to provide in other countries.
Official court/police requests must be followed, everyone company is doing that everywhere. And some of them collect more user data than the others, but Musk probably forgot to inform his users he has stored some evidence of their crimes. I mean, we all know that most of the people think their private messages on twitter, telegram, facebook… are private
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Allegedly! And that’s what he claimed.
Yes, that’s fair. I don’t like Musk myself, but the STF has mandated people’s accounts to be banned on Twitter. That’s a fact.
Hmm. Reading into this further, it seems to be both (Article).
Some quotes from the article, accentuation by me:
The banning of X, which has more than 22 million users in Brazil, is the climax of a politically charged, months-long arm wrestle between the country’s top court and the rightwing tech billionaire.
Alexandre de Moraes, the influential supreme court judge responsible for the ban, had been spearheading an attempt to force X to purge anti-democratic, far-right voices in the wake of the January 2023 uprising in the capital, BrasĂlia, carried out by supporters of the former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro.
Musk, who has aligned himself with rightwing figures including Bolsonaro and his US ally Donald Trump, pushed back, accusing Moraes of squelching free speech and trying to censor conservative views. Musk’s public attacks on Moraes – many of them infantile and vulgar – were reminiscent of his repeated online digs at the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, during the recent far-right UK riots, which X’s owner was [accused of inflaming](You know who else should be on trial for the UK’s far-right riots? Elon Musk | Jonathan Freedland | The Guardian).
The final straw before X’s blocking in Brazil came on Thursday, when Musk ignored a 24-hour deadline to name a new legal representative after the social media platform closed its local office in mid-August.
On the plus side:
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The “other means” part is pertinent. Probably puts users of network monitoring tools that also employ anti-DPI (deep packet inspection) techniques (like GoodbyeDPI and Rethink) in legal crosshairs. 
Also, what if Twitter implements ECH (Encrypted ClientHello)? Using Chrome or Firefox (which can already do DNS-over-HTTPS) then might set you back by $9000 as it will, I reckon, totally get past their firewall?
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Twitter is literally a tool that provides freedom (of speech), users’ rights. Lack of representation does not violate the rights of users. The state’s claims against Twitter have nothing to do with protecting the rights of users.
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Its time to ride the Nostr bandwagon.
Oh really? Try to make account and then start criticizing nationalism, religion, even fascism using really hard words (no actual threats), and see how long it will last. I’ve seen such accounts banned more than once (also before and after Musk), but maybe things have changed now.
Would be also good to make that account without phone number and via VPN or Tor, you know, to protect your own privacy rights
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