Starlink is refusing to comply with Brazil's X ban (Update: Starlink will comply)

Sounds like they're likely also to find themselves in legal trouble
At least one can hope
- I thought about that; then I thought what that guy makes in a few minutes'interest on his offshore accounts is probably more than all of Brazil, in a year, and since taxes fund the government and a host of other things, idk
  
  The country of Brazil makes something like 20x Musk's total net worth, but every year.
  
  People like musk don't make money, they make credit.
  
  That's not how money works

On one hand, fuck Musk. On the other hand, internet from space that can't be blocked by governments is a net positive in my book.
- Don't forget that Musk is also the one who intentionally blocked paid service from Ukraine during a critical moment in the early days of Russia's current genocide, because Musk sucks up to Putin. Dude needs to answer for his actions.
  
  Yep, fuck Musk
  
  ~~actions~~ crimes
- Secret cabal of space lizard people.
  
  That is the catch. Ideally they wouldn't automatically cooperate with the dictators on the ground, but that hasn't been the case.
- How about internet that can be blocked at the whims of a billionaire? At least government is supposed to answer to the people.
  
  *Their lobbying shareholders and maybe the people that elected them
  
  Dictatorships don't answer to the people. It's absolutely a problem that billionaires are controlling the flow of information, but it's much worse for a dictator to do it.
- Not blockable by any government would be a positive in my book if it didn't imply bloclable by a single billionaire with huge mood swing. Don't forget how musk switched off starlink in Crimea at Putin's request when the Russian realized starlink guided missile were heading towards their ships (Source
  
  That's not exactly what happened. Starlink was already disabled in Crimea when the attack was launched and Musk refused to enable it specifically for the attack. Then the initial reports got a bit tangled up.
  But yes, none of this should be up to Musk.
- How is a billionaire manchild in charge any better, at least a government is accountable to the people.
  
  In theory, but how many governments can actually be held accountable? The power imbalance is often too great for the people to hold anyone accountable. In many countries, the system is rigged.
- Controlled by governments or controlled by corpos and the super rich? I say there's hardly an improvement.
  
  Yeah, cables or radio waves, it's the same thing in the end.
  What we need (IMO) is another layer on top if the classic internet with encryption and hookers.
  
  No, but through the existence of both options, you can get more plurality than by using one individual option.
  
  Government can throw you in jail.
- Oh? What about internet controlled by a billionaire who makes sure his toxic website featuring his version of “free speech” is always available to protect his profits and spread his bullshit while undermining the policies of a sovereign state?
  So much better than the evil government.
  
  How many people is the billionaire incarcerating?
  
  That's better than a dictator who only wants to protect his own power. At least a billionaire can be bought.
- Can't calculate the net yet, since we don't know the gross. He has the capability to cause massive damage with the power he wields. It's already clear that he's incapable of providing an unbiased platform. It needs to belong to the people or it can never be trusted
  
  It needs to belong to the people or it can never be trusted
  Damn commies!
- That’s an arbitrary metric. What about internet across oceans, or across forests? Blocking content is a question of why and what. Shouldn’t we be able to block child exploitation websites? That is to say, of course we can, and it’s very easy. The only question is whether you want that kind of censorship to be up to your service provider or your government.
  
  Governments tend to block things like facts about genocides they have committed and opposing political opinions. I would hope things like child exploitation could be managed at the host level.
- it can be (and has been) blocked by musk on occasion though.
- What if payments to Starlink are blocked by Brazilian government?
  
  Starlink is free in Brazil right now.
  
  He is in a unique position, theoretically he can make everything go through the country his servers are in assuming they pay over their own satellite internet, illegal… mmm almost certainly but so is keeping Ex Twitter on in Brazil so he probably doesn’t care about that, and it’s essentially exactly what a VPN does sooo, oh yeah they could also just use a VPN I guess.
- it's already been blocked in ukraine by musk at the request of putin
- You can block or disrupt communications with LEO.
  But you'd need the blessing of the country's government to pump out that much interference continuously.
- It's not worth the cost of ruining LEO and the environmental effects of them burning up in the atmosphere

What i love about musk is that he is the best bad example. Maybe someday he'll start a war with some country and then people will start to understand that no single person or group should hold this much power. Because there are also a handful of other people and groups with the same resources who choose to hide in the background.
- The Corporate Wars. 🥲

Usually Gwen Shotwell, SpaceX COO, is good at keeping Elon in check and not screwing up SpaceX business. I wonder what happened this time.
- This is the intersection of Xitter and SpaceX and it looks like Xitter takes priority.
  
  If you can only access Xitter through SpaceX, can we call the combination "SpaceXitter"?
  
  His ego is above all else

Logically, now they have to ban Starlink too.
- Seems like it's on the table
  https://www.reuters.com/technology/brazils-supreme-court-chamber-forms-majority-uphold-x-suspension-2024-09-02/
  Tensions between Brazil and Elon Musk's business empire ratcheted up further as the country's telecoms regulator threatened to sanction his satellite broadband company Starlink hours after its top court stood behind a controversial decision to ban social network X from the country.
  A senior official at telecommunications regulator Anatel said sanctions against Starlink for noncompliance could include the revocation of its license to operate in Brazil.
- the world needs to ban starlink
- Starlink backed down and blocked Twitter as requested.
- I'm curious: what would that mean, within Brazil's borders? Would they be able to prevent Starlink from being used? Broadcast a Starlink jamming signal over the whole country? Or turn it into a diplomatic issue, with the US State Department getting involved?

- The problem is that this IS the blueprint.
  Blocking twitter? That's fine. People generally hate twitter so whatever.
  But starlink? That is a genuinely okay product (so long as it isn't too sunny where you live...) and actually does serve a niche for people who can't get better internet. And it rapidly will go from "The government blocked twitter. I guess that is probably good?" to "The government is taking away internet from thousands of people and this is literally worse than china"
  
  Brazilian here, the court couldn’t find anyone in Brazil that represents X to pay the fines and to block the accounts spreading lies about the anti-democratic events of January of last year. Since Elon Musk is one of the major shareholder of both companies they connected the dots and Starlink has representatives in Brazil their account was frozen in order to get the fines owed by Musk’s other company. Later the government found out Starlink was not blocking access to X as any other internet provided was instructed to do so.
  Musk is a big supporter of Far-right Brazilians including former president Bolsonaro and his political allies. It was during Bolsonaro’s government that Brazilian army switched to use Starlink.
  The free speech agenda that Musk is advertising is not the main issue here but a government that goes against Musks interests and his companies.
  
  Yeah. It’s really sad that a lot of people on remote areas in the Amazon will be affected by a ban on starlink. They also spent quite a bit of money for Brazil’s standards on the equipment as well.
  Still, this shouldn’t be the reason to put anyone above the law, no one should be above a county’s law.
  If this actually happens it may really backfire on Elon and all companies he’s involved, at least in Brazil.
  As you invested your money in one of his companies products and now because of his massive ego/lack of mental stability you either lost support, functionality or access to parts (for maintenance of hardware) and I doubt any of his companies would pay their users for this inconvenience. This would make using any of the products he’s involved with too risky, better to just use a more “mentally stable” competitor even if the service or product is slightly worse.
  
  In this case, assuming Brazil made the right call, I'd look at it more as "Starlink is taking away internet from thousands of people" instead of "the government". Nobody can or should expect any government to allow businesses to operate within their border that blatantly disregards legal orders. If people lose access to the internet the blame is on Starlink's hubris, not the government's insistence on the rule of law.
  That said, I have not been following this story and am cautious enough about Brazil's government that I'm not taking any stance here over which side is right or wrong.

Remember that time Musk expressed that he was in favor of free speech? Then he censored content on his platform for the Turkish government?
- Yes, then he got a bunch of backlash and now he's doing the reverse. And people are losing their shit even more
  
  Weird how he's helping the far right in both cases.
  complying with Erdogan
  refusing to block fascists
  
  It bothers me that he is trying to protect nazis.
  
  Damned if you do, damned if you don't. People will find a reason to hate him.

Brazil has an extradition agreement with the United States. Would love to see that shit get put to use.
- That's not how extradition works. You have to give people up to the US criminal system. They don't reciprocate. They just promise not to coup your government.
  
  Why would the US strain their relationship with Brazil over Musk? Politically, it makes sense to extradite him.
  Also imma need a citation on how extradition works, I searched the wiki and couldn't find anything.
  
  Extradition treaties are almost always reciprocal and this particular treaty is publicly available. No public treaty is going to include a promise not to coup another government because of the obvious political consequences of admitting you might to everyone else.

just pull their business licence and any government grants then and let the world follow suit.

how are people supposed to pay starlink if their accounts are frozen? is starlink offering free internet?
- As the article says, yes.
  
  W
- Supposedly Starlink is maintaining service for existing accounts, even if they can't bill them ATM.
  Somehow I don't think that'll last all that long.

They should kick his shit out of the country
- Can't really do that when his shit is quite literally in space floating above your country in orbit.
  
  They can easily make it illegal for them to operate there.
  
  His shit is also on the ground. Do you think the satellites beam an internet connection directly into a laptop or something? That said, finding and seizing the individual receivers seems unlikely. They've already instituted a hefty fine (equivalent to more a year's average salary) for even using a VPN to little effect.
  Beyond that, they've also threatened to seize all local assets/offices and emplacements if Starlink doesn't comply. There's several dozen as I recall.
  
  Roundhouse kick then
  
  Bunch of space junk fucking up the world's view of the stars.

As of 2024-09-03T22:10:25.545Z, Starlink is now complying with Brazil's X ban [1].

If Starlink follows through on its reported vow to ignore the X ban, it is likely to face similar sanctions itself for ignoring a supreme court order.
That could have a big impact in the Brazilian Amazon, where Starlink antennae have spread rapidly since being made available in September 2022, bringing high-speed internet connection to far-flung regions. By the end of 2023 Starlink antennae were being used in more than 90% of the Amazon’s municipalities, according to BBC Brasil.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/sep/02/brazils-supreme-court-upholds-x-ban-over-conduct
- I mean are those people really going to be using Twitter anyway?

Gonna be funny when Brazil bans starlink too.
- **Update, September 3, 5:15PM ET: **Starlink has reversed course on its decision to not comply with Brazil’s block of X.
  
  That was fast.

This statement was later retracted. The Engadget article was redacted accordingly.

Edit: Updated the title to reflect the update in the story. Seeing some comments from people who haven’t actually read the article.

Do people here not generally dislike government censorship? The root of this seems to be x refusing the country's government's demands to ban certain people
- Try typing the word "cisgender" into Twitter.
  
  Don't have or plan to get twitter, care to enlighten me?
- X doesn't seem to have any issue censoring accounts for Musk's autocratic buddies like Erdogan, so let's not try and pretend that he's above caving in to government censorship. He's just pissed off in this case that he's being asked to do it in a way that would hurt his friends in Brazil. The site has been called out over the last several years multiple times for refusing to take any steps to moderate misinformation spread by Bolsonaro and his political allies in attempts to undermine democracy and influence the results of the last election, like the endless claims of electronic voting being insecure in the lead up to the last elections, Bolsonaro's COVID denialism and many other examples.
  
  Absolutely not trying to take the side of musk here, dude's a shitter. Fact of the matter remains the government in this case is using its power to remove people from the public eye, I would dislike that regardless of what platform or who was refusing to do it
- It is well established that the right to free speech is NOT unlimited, and the "fire in a crowded theater" people tend to be the loudest complainers. Brazil is a sovereign nation entitled to its own interpretation of how to handle free speech protections, and X has repeatedly made the claim they obey the laws of the countries in which it operates.
  Also, it's disingenuous of anybody to take X's side on this over free speech when the past two years they have complied with basically every single request from every government for personal identifying information for any user. People are serving multi-decade prison sentences for their speech because X has refused to stand up to, for example, the government of Saudi Arabia when demanding the identities of state critics.
  So it's okay to kowtow to governments when they want to violate the right to privacy, but not when they want to shut down speech which is outside a sovereign nation's definition of free speech? And let's be clear - we were talking about 7 users.
  You can't have it both ways. You can't say it's reasonable for a company to violate ONE right for a government under absolutely unethical circumstances and not another under SLIGHTLY debatable circumstances and expect anybody to take your position seriously. X is not a freedom fighter, and it's not an actor for justice. It's a partisan cesspool run by a man who is stacking the deck for the side he wants when it serves his interests.
  
  I'm by no means defending musk or X. I think they shouldn't have banned those users and also think they shouldn't have revealed info about users who are not actively threatening to hurt someone
  My statement was that in general it concerns me that governments are able to silence anybody in this way, which is where federation comes in handy
- We don't dislike government censorship of CSAM. it's all a spectrum based on the legitimacy of the government order and the legitimacy of the tech billionaire's refusal to abide.
  
  Honestly, while I think CSAM is disgusting, I am kind of against government censorship of it. Some go so far as to ban anything resembling CSAM, including imagery that looks like it, but doesn't actually involve a real child. The problem is the abuse required to create it, but if that abuse didn't happen, there is no crime, and it should therefore be completely legal.
  The same goes with free speech more broadly. The speech itself should never be illegal, but it should be usable as evidence of another crime. A threat of violence is the crime, and that should be prosecuted, but that shouldn't mean the government should force the host to censor the speech, that should be at the host's discretion. What the government can do is subpoena information relevant to the investigation, but IMO it shouldn't compel any entity to remove content.
  That said, Brazilian law isn't the same as US law, and X and Space X should respect the laws of all of the countries in which they operate.
  
  I'm willing to bet the people that government wanted were not infact posting CSAM, I'm pretty sure even x would ban them of its own volition pretty quickly if they were doing that

- Because they broke the law.
  
  The law being, "Thou shalt not have fun on the internet" ?

So Nazi's eh? I hate Nazi's. Let's unravel this knotted beast a bit. If the Brazilian citizens are posting illegal content, arrest them. Forcefully cut off their internet, -snip snip- done, seize their bank accounts, works on Russia. It should never be the job of a privately owned corporation to enforce the law when the law is perfectly capable of neutralizing the offending entities and enforcing the rules it's own damn self, are they going to make it illegal for Walmart to sell them a cell phone? Couldn't they just create a new account with a new email over VPN? Wouldn't it be easier if the citizens are breaking the law to arrest them rather than take away their Twitter account? I am not a fan of that fat musky sum bitch, but there is literally no reason that judge has to go after X(I really hate that name), other than he's swinging his dick around and doesn't like to be told to put some damn underwear on. Arrest the citizens if they are breaking the law, if they aren't breaking the law then what gives anyone the right to silence them? Just an egomaniac judge with no actual laws backing him and a tiny shvance facing off against a megalomaniac with a tiny shvance that consistently protects only the free speech he agrees with. There. Unknotted. If the people of Brazil want Nazi propaganda to end in a prison sentence, it should be law, and then all Twitter has to do is the same thing it does with other illegal content, turn over the user to the authorities and wash their hands of the mess. Not some judge unilaterally making free speech decisions(even in Brazil)
- It's perfectly valid to seize or forbid account that break the law. And if a company facilitates others to break the law you ask them to stop. In this case the company refused to.. so now they are in trouble too.
  If Brazil had a law that requires cars to be limited to 100km/h then they need to modify their cars to meet the law. And with ota updates do this in that country. If someone imports a car and it's not updated even though the manufacturer knows it is in that country, they also breech the law.
- That Nazi propaganda spreading user? Elon Musk.