The conflict between X/Twitter and the Brazilian judiciary took a surprising turn on August 30, when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the interruption of the social network’s operations in the South American country. The complete cessation of a major communication service — without precedent in a democratic country — was triggered by the company’s refusal to obey a court order that X suspend any user accounts involved in the January 8, 2023, capital riot in Brasília.
After the ban, on September 18, X changed its network provider, resulting in a temporary restoration of service. Brazil’s Supreme Court reacted by imposing a daily fine of almost $1 million, prompting X to move back to its previous network provider the following day. Finally, after months of intense political drama, X began to comply with some of the court’s demands on September 21, and Brazilians are now tweeting again.
The clash between Elon Musk and Brazil highlights a dilemma that goes much deeper than social media. At its core, it’s about the complexities of a sovereign nation regulating a digital space overwhelmingly ruled by US corporations. Preventing people from using their favorite social networks is obviously not a solution, but the broader transformations of the digital landscape in the past decades underscore that it’s not enough to just “let the market rule.”
In a 1993 interview for Wired, archconservative and tech evangelist George Gilder described the internet as exactly the “kind of metaphor for spontaneous order” envisioned by neoliberal…
La suite est à lire sur: jacobin.com
Auteur: Cecilia Rikap
