Thread by @petelincoln48

1/As you know Twitter was shut down for not complying with Brazilian law

time.com/7016537/brazil…

2/Brazilian judges shut down Meta’s WhatsApp, the nation’s most widely used messaging app, several times in 2015 and 2016 due to the company’s refusal to comply with police requests for user data.

3/In 2022, de Moraes threatened the messaging app Telegram with a nationwide shutdown. He ordered Telegram to appoint a local representative; the company ultimately complied and stayed online.

4/Twitter or X is owned by one of the US largest Military and Intelligence Contractors and has openly supported coups in countries like Bolivia and Venezuela. Brazil is right to be concerned when he supports those who attempted a coup in Brazil

5/January 8, 2023, one week after the inauguration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Bolsonaro supporters stormed several government buildings in Brasília. Maybe the same folks behind US J6 and Brazils J8?

6/Brazilian authorities—most prominently Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes—aggressively sought to limit the reach of, or in some cases deactivate entirely, certain social media accounts.

7/Musk is trying to convince a global audience that Brazil is under a censorious regime silencing free speech rights, which serves the purpose of undermining the Lula administration and destabilizing Brazil

8/In Brazil some 40 million people—or about 18 percent of the population in Brazil—access X at least once a month.

9/Musk in response to a court order demanding that X block an undisclosed number of accounts or face heavy daily fines, made clear that he would not only ignore the ruling, but lift restrictions on previously suspended Brazilian accounts.

10/Several of the messages and videos posted to X by the accounts Moraes ordered suspended demanded a military coup and the murder of “communist” opposition leaders, to prevent the winning candidate, Luís Inácio Lula da Silva, from taking office.

11/These demands spread freely on X, even though calling for the armed forces to attempt a coup is a crime under Brazil’s Constitution, which was created in 1988 in the aftermath of two decades of bloody military dictatorship.

12/Musk urged Brazilians to resist Moraes, whom he referred to as a “dictator” holding Lula “on a leash,”

13/X executes numerous content removal orders around the world and Musk himself does not criticize dictatorial governments when his economic interests take precedence.

14/The Brazilian approach to free speech is not the same as America’s; there is no First Amendment equivalent in Brazil.

14a/In Brazil, as in Europe, freedom of expression is an essential right that is equal to other essential rights. If you try to use one right to infringe upon another right, you will face limitations.

15/Brazil is a pluralistic democracy. To assert otherwise is to subvert the democratically elected government of the fourth-largest democracy in the world.

16/These are the most draconian demands of any country on Earth!” Musk tweeted. That assertion is, of course, absurd on its face when you remember X isn’t even allowed to operate in China—a country where Musk has made big investments with Tesla.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1777080103236972587

17/Musk visited China in April as he clashed with Brazil. He seems happy

18/And anyone who knows the history of Musk’s acquiescence to various authoritarians from China to Turkey to India will know he doesn’t put up a similar fight when governments want to prohibit speech.

19/For example X complied with the blocking of criticism of Turkish President Recep Tayyip  Erdoğan, on the eve of the most recent national elections in Turkey.

20/Since 2022, Justice Moraes has held the rotating presidency of the Superior Electoral Court. One of his first initiatives as the main referee of Brazil’s elections was to create an “intelligence center” to combat electoral violence. 

newrepublic.com/article/180878…

21/Two months later, he spearheaded a resolution granting the Superior Electoral Court the ability to order social media platforms and websites to remove content without the need for a specific request from a prosecutor or plaintiff

22/Following his first tweet against Moraes, Musk published a series of posts and reposts in early April accusing Moraes of "betraying the constitution" through an "aggressive censorship" that "appears to violate the law & will of the people of Brazil."

23/Musk even demanded for Moraes to be impeached. He also called him a "criminal" who was responsible for "the most draconian demands of any country on Earth." Musk said he would lift the restrictions on all the previously suspended accounts.

24/Musk further inflamed his followers by directing them to Twitter Files Brazil, a series of allegations made a few days prior by journalist Michael Shellenberger.

x.com/shellenberger

25/Shellenberger had released email exchanges between X's legal team in Brazil and their colleagues in San Francisco discussing Moraes’ decision to suspend the accounts and lawsuits filed against other social media platforms in Brazil.

26/Shellenberger made two allegations against Moraes: that the Justice had ordered the suspension of a set of X accounts while asking for the platform to pretend the decision was theirs;

26a/and that he had threatened to arrest X's attorney in Brazil should the platform not provide the court with users' personal data.

27/He later retracted both allegations as they were false. But not before they served as a reason for right-wing representatives to prevent the passage of a bill seeking to regulate social media in the country similar to those introduced in the EU, Canada, Australia and the U.K.

28/Moraes opened an inquiry into Musk and reiterated his order to keep the accounts suspended or else X would be required to pay a fine. This prompted Musk to level up his attacks on Moraes.

29/Eventually, even President Lula commented on the case, saying that Musk was interfering in Brazilian democracy.

ijnet.org/en/story/how-t…

30/While pretending to fight for Free Speech Musk claims the right to limit the reach of your Speech.

31/At the same time X turns around and sells Dataminr fire-hose access to users’ posts, which Dataminr then passes through to the government. Such data if it includes the users banking information makes it even more valuable

theintercept.com/2024/03/25/elo…

32/X seems to be acting as an agent for the CIA in other countries. No surprise given he is one of the biggest Military Intelligence Contractors and even-pre Musk Twitter cooperated with them.

33/Is he also helping them influence our own Election? Serious question. I follow Kamala and Walz, not that I am a big fan , but my feed is inundated with pro-Trump and anti-Kamala/Walz posts and I rarely see any of their posts. Shadow banning Presidential candidates? Really? End

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