SAO PAULO (AP) — Elon Musk’s satellite-based internet service provider Starlink backtracked Tuesday and said it will comply with a Brazilian Supreme Court justice’s order to block the billionaire’s social media platform, X.
Starlink said in a statement posted on X that it will heed Justice Alexandre de Moraes’ order despite him having frozen the company’s assets. Previously, it informally told the telecommunications regulator that it would not comply until de Moraes reversed course.
“Regardless of the illegal treatment of Starlink in freezing our assets, we are complying with the order to block access to X in Brazil,” the company statement said. “We continue to pursue all legal avenues, as are others who agree that @alexandre’s recent order violate the Brazilian constitution.”
Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.
As someone who had a plan until I got hit in the face, I agree.
My plan was to get punched in the face!!! Yet again, I am ahead of the curve!!!
If they swing first, it’s self defense. Good plan.
Great plan, Face McPunchy
But what was your plan after that? Everyone has a plan until the plan is complete.
To get face punched again ofc.
I didn’t even have a plan.
Some people plan to get punched in the face. Don’t kink shame.
We’re supposed to have plans?!
I drew a map of Zelda 1 once. Does that count?
Some footage of me trying to get caught up today
Pussy. Go on, Elon. Make your companies play chicken with a national government. I’m sure every other national government out there will definitely back you up, because making a company above the law (without paying the requisite bribes) is DEFINITELY something that national governments want to normalize!
Starlink satellites are (quite literally) above the law. Until Brazil develops a space force to go seize them out of orbit, it seems like Elon can do whatever the fuck he wants.
You can jam the signal with very little power, and you can prevent people in Brazil from paying for the service.
and you can prevent people in Brazil from paying for the service.
To be fair, Brazil tried that and Elmo just made starlink free for use in Brazil as retaliation. But obviously that’s not something he could do with every country on earth if he wants to make a profit
When was that?
The links require a station on the ground, and services must be paid for monthly. Those are two things a local government can control pretty effectively.
They can think it violates the Brazilian constitution all they like, my understanding is that the supreme court already weighed in on the issue and that’s the only opinion that matters in most countries.
What a braindead take.
You’ve never heard of biased, politically motivated supreme court justices? That’s… hard to believe. You should Google “Roe v Wade” and then check back. How can two different versions of a supreme court rule completely differently on the same issue if the underlying constitution hasn’t changed?
Read the relevant parts of their constitution, then check the supreme courts decision, and let me know how you think it makes sense.
What a braindead take
I love when people call out their own stupidity at the top of their comments
The issue is when you refuse to engage in the legal process at all you lose the right to find compromise. It’s the same reason Alex Jones was defaulted.
You’ve never heard of biased, politically motivated supreme court justices?
And the solution is a billionaire and his vanity project flagrantly ignoring the Supreme Court?
Alright. What is starlink’s legal path to overturn the decision? Whether the decision makes sense or not doesn’t change what the decision was.
Point isn’t whether it’s right or not. The point is that once the supreme court rules, there’s no “higher” court to take it to. The lower courts can’t rule differently on something explicitly ruled on already, and they can’t “overrule” the supreme court since they are explicitly “under” them. So regardless of what Starlink says, they aren’t going to change that, at least not any time soon. And X will either be dead, irrelevant, or significantly modified by the time the court changes enough to get them to change their decision.
I’m not fully in the loop, but wasn’t it just 1 judge and could be challenged to all of them, but then all of them sided with the 1?
If musk and X wanted to argue that in court, they could’ve appointed legal representation in Brazil. Instead, ol’ musky closed down the Brazil offices of X, like the braindead weirdo that he is.
As we say in my country, the person who burns his own butt, has to sit on the blisters.
People keep telling me to go into research but none of them are willing to pay for my time
Glad he got bitch-slapped on this one.
Typical. Send the lawyers first to intimidate. Then get told you have no case. Then walk back tail between legs.
Sounds a bit like how he ended up with twitter in the first place
I love that he is so stupid that he didn’t realize he could back out of a legality by saying, “LOL JK.”
He’s got a huge clean ai dataset
All while loudly mouthing off
Hey happy Lemmy bday! Nice little cake!
Elon Musk is picking fights with everyone these days.
Everyone except fascists
Why would he pick a fight with the only group in the world that currently supports him?
Why would he pick fights with himself?
I wonder when he’ll go to rehab. He’s so unhinged.
He’s testing the limits of “fuck you” money expect “you” are national governments
That’s a bummer. I was hoping EU countries would be inspired by Brazil to actually enforce some of their laws and ban Twitter as well.
Edit: as vxx pointed out, there is a positive way to interpret this outcome, and I was probably being needlessly pessimistic.
Am I missing something? twitter is still blocked in brasil. The article is about starlink caving in and blocking it as well for brasilian users.
EU might still block them once they decided he doesn’t comply with the law, and fines didn’t help.
Sorry. To clarify what I meant: the “bummer” is that I want the situation with Starlink, Twitter, and Brazil to result in the permanent downfall of that dogshit site, and severe fines for Starlink so that other countries can look toward Brazil as an example of how to deal with the kinds of social media sites that allow disinformation to propagate.
The fact that Starlink has agreed to comply takes off some of the heat, and therefore leaves some of the territory of fully exploring the legal ramifications of holding reich-wing billionaire freaks somewhat accountable for the shit that their companies do unexplored. Yeah, it’s good that Twitter is still forbidden from operating in Brazil, but I would have liked for Musk to face more repercussions through Starlink as well.
I hope that the EU still takes action against Twitter though, with or without any additional escalation involving Starlink.
I see it as a positive. Elon tried to strong arm the judge but they froze assets to show they’re not to be fucked with. It worked and the billionaire didn’t get away.
Others can still take it as an inspiration or motivation.
Good point. I edited my original comment. Thanks for providing a more positive perspective on this :)
I feel pretty conflicted on this whole thing. Don’t get me wrong, it’s hilarious seeing Elon squirm, but it’s disconcerting to see everyone cheering on government censorship of the internet.
Typically, I would agree. However, what is happening with Twitter and Brazil isn’t censorship; it’s Twitter refusing to appoint legal council to respond to any legal complaints within Brazil’s jurisdiction. Musk has made the conscious decision to have Twitter not be legally-compliant with Brazil’s laws, therefore Brazil doesn’t allow them to operate there.
However, what is happening with Twitter and Brazil isn’t censorship
The Brazilian government is forcing an ISP to block customers’ access to a specific website. Whether it’s right or wrong is up for discussion, but I can’t accept the claim that this is not censorship.
