If Starlink/Twitter/X doesn’t want to do business in BR or comply with local laws, then they are bound to suffer consequences (losing audience or assets seized).
Because it's fundamentally unreasonable to hold one company responsible for the actions of another on the basis of a common shareholder and executive? The rule of law (or at least the generally consistent appearance of it) is far preferable to the open rule of man in wantonly levelling attacks against everyone and everything associated with someone that a government official dislikes.
These judges are known for punishing family members of the people they go after. I've recently seen news of their censorship of social media accounts of a politician for "fake news" or some other nonsense, and they censored the accounts of his wife as well. Faceless corporations probably mean nothing to people like these. They want Musk, they see Musk's name on Starlink, they go after Starlink.
Is it unreasonable when the executive and shareholder in question is in their personal capacity flagrantly opposed to compliance and also professionally trying to avoid compliance with a previous court ruling by removing more pertinent assets? And the satellite network itself is a delivery mechanism if/when X gets blocked in Brazil, so there's reason to preemptively seize that given Musk's public statements on this topic.
(In case it isn't obvious: I'm not a lawyer, I've not really considered this in any depth beyond some other news sources besides this tweet, and this is a totally noob question that may have an answer in literally lawschool 101).
I can't answer to legality since IANAL and systems vary anyways, but on a moral basis, yes, it is absolutely nonetheless unreasonable until SpaceX / Starlink actually commit an actionable offense of their own or otherwise demonstrate the intent to do so. It's outstandingly unreasonable and offensive to seize assets of such an entity without charging that specific entity with an offense; especially so when your basis is literally "I want to compel an unrelated venture with common beneficial ownership to unilaterally censor my political opponents worldwide".
AFAICT, Starlink complies with local regulations in the countries it operates in, including blocking access to specific IP prefixes and/or declining to default resolve DNS entries for specific domains.
Musk said you can use Starlink to circumvent the block if X gets blocked in Brazil.
IANAL but I'm pretty sure this is legal ground enough (plus all the shit Musk spits on Twitter, attacking Brazil and its institutions, a criminal offense in Brazil, from his ivory tower in Texas) to solicit a block of Starlink Holdings assets.
There are plenty of reasons out there to justify these actions and you can be sure Moraes will find them.
EDIT: Musk said this in April during Twitter Files Brazil.
Unfortunately he deleted the tweet and I can't find it anywhere, but it was mentioned during the whole "Twitter Files Brazil" saga where Musk explicitly said "Starlink userd won't be affected if X gets blocked".
As a Brazilian citizen, X / Musk have broken the law and have been fined. The fines are meant to compensate for damages done against my country. I absolutely want that debt to be paid. Moraes, within the boundaries of the law, has seized assets from another company that belongs to the same individual who's committing those crimes and is trying to evade punishment by closing the fined company. This should never be allowed to be used as a means to evade punishment.
From where I'm standing, this is legal security - not the opposite. In fact, I don't know if the law would allow it, but morally I would be fine with Musk being given a prison order or other sanctions for using such artifices in an attempt to evade justice.
Musk owns 42% of SpaceX, Starlink is a subsidiary.
I can't speak to SpaceX shareholders because they are private, but of the public Tesla that's also associated with Musk, there are shareholders who want him out because his public behaviour is interfering with the business interests, and that argument will gain weight as a result of stuff like this.
Is that "deserved" depends a great deal about how you model the entire world, but activists investors are a thing and they do fight company management.
You have no idea how much disinformation there is in Brazil. Its basically 24/7 information warfare there, from both sides. I have family there, I was blown away by how aggressive it all was when visiting last year.
The only time they tried to do tracking on where these posts and sockpuppets were coming from, they ended up in Israel (this is a common practice, I'm assuming to make tracing and legal action more difficult. In Portugal the bots come from Angola).
Its clear that the same disinformation farms that are running in the US were duplicated to Brazil, by the same people (Bob Mercer / Steve Bannon). Proof of that was of course, the deeply personal relationship between Bannon and the Bolsonaro family (when he was out of jail he would visit all the time), and the faux January 6th that was replicated in Brazil after Bolsonaro's defeat.
You have to understand that the population of Brazil has A LOT less education than the population in the US or Europe. They are far more malleable to disinformation.
One of the worse examples I can think of is the disinformation campaign that was activated after the murder of Marielle Franco, who was tagged in fake photos with local Rio drug dealers - while she was still dead inside her car. So a few minutes after the murder, you had a giant disinformation campaign launched. Since it was so fast, the only reasonable conclusion is the murderers control a disinformation bot/sockpuppet farm.
He ignored court orders, he broke the law. By (repeatedly) doing that, he enabled terrorist groups and disinformation networks to attack Brazilian society and democracy.
Just so we are clear, you're saying that Twitter/X should continue to operate in the country so it'll be subject to their law instead of choosing up shop and avoiding dealing with what they think are unreasonable demands?
If Twitter doesn't want to follow the laws of Brazil, then they need to stop providing access to Brazil.
Merely having no office in some country not sufficient, for the same reason it wasn't sufficient for preventing New Zealand based Kim Dotcom to be prosecuted (and his Hong Kong-based Mega Upload domain to be seized) by the USA.
Or all the defamation suits against US citizens filed in the UK on the grounds that being published on the internet counted as if it was published in the UK, forcing the US (Federal and State) to pass laws preventing payment of penalties in such cases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel_tourism
Edit:
Just found an interesting claim, thought I cannot verify it myself:
"Under Brazilian law, social networks must have a representative to receive and consider government takedown notices about political misinformation. X has no such person after closing down its Brazil office. Moraes gave the X platform 24 hours to name a new legal representative or face a nationwide suspension." - https://www.siliconrepublic.com/business/x-brazil-suspension...
Starlink does comply with local laws in BR and wants to do business there.
Plus this has repercussions for people in other countries that want to restrict freedom of speech and strong arm social media, and is watched by governments.
Plus this is just tech news, you can post 'why do we care' to pretty much any other story on the front page.
Supreme court members weren't democratically elected. The aristocratic families that own the Brazilian political system and pull the strings behind the curtains weren't democratically elected. Even Maduro, self-appointed "democratically elected" president of Venezuela, from time to time make fun of Brazilian electoral system. Unelected foreign billionaire as a bonus doesn't force me to pay taxes or force me to use X.
> Unelected foreign billionaire as a bonus doesn't force me to pay taxes or force me to use X.
I see this sentiment almost everywhere in the world: people rightfully afraid of their own governments and willfully grant influence over their country to the foreign and often enemy state.
This is a systems problem with positive feedback loop, which means that whoever wins will have all the influence and control over the population over time.
And a lot of people see no problem with the fact that it can be the geopolitical enemy until it is too late.
I don’t know the situation in Brazil, but I see this happening over and over in my part of the world.
They are both privately owned by a dude that reinstated accounts that make threats against members of Brazil’s supreme court(1) and then recently tried to reframe it as a petty squabble about posting by posting weird angry AI-generated memes about a judge (2).
It is unsurprising to see somebody that’s actively trying to push the envelope about a country’s sovereignty be hit with sanctions on their business operations inside said country.
This has been controversial in Brazil - not 100% clear cut. While suspending some of accounts making threats should be supported, de Moraes has been also going after what seem to be legit political activity
Furthermore, instead of banning the accounts upfront, for disputed casese, it would seem to be a fair to have court process for the people involved and let them defend their behaviour.
> Last week, the Supreme Court justices ruled on six appeals filed by Twitter, Telegram, TikTok, Google (owner of YouTube) and Meta (the group that controls Facebook and Instagram) against Moraes' decision in a virtual session. They all unanimously considered that blocking all channels, profiles and accounts of a person or party is an act of prior censorship, something expressly prohibited by the Constitution and also clearly rejected by the Internet Civil Rights Framework, in respect of freedom of expression.
Yes, on paper. The legal action against Starlink has claimed that they're being considered part of the same economic group for being controlled by the same private owner, who is considered direct responsible for the violations of one of them. Which is true.
Separate legal entities, according to the US legal system, yes. But they definitely aren't completely separate entities. It isn't like Brazil targeted Starlink at random.
In the practical sense, Twitter is the marketing arm of all his other companies. My theory was that he was acting out belligerently against the Brazillian government because his other companies had minimal or no presence in Brazil. Didn't think of Starlink presence frankly.
Regardless, since he himself uses Twitter as quid pro quo with other governments, I'm guessing he saw this move a mile away.
It’s illegal to dishonor a judge in Brazil, that’s why they are going after so many of their journalists, because any criticism can be judged dishonorable by the judge.
We care because it's just sad to see a country like Brazil that once had so much potential devolve back into a banana republic. Multiple political factions there are so focused on beating each other that they have lost sight what's best for the country as a whole. Regardless of what anyone thinks of Elon Musk or content moderation policies on X, losing access to Starlink can only be a negative for Brazil's economic development. In the real world, countries that lack superpower status can't afford to stand on principle in international disputes. They have to be pragmatic. It doesn't even really matter which side is morally or legally in the right in this particular pissing match. There's no good alternative to Starlink, Brazil is too poor to build an indigenous alternative, and everyone who needs broadband satellite service is going to suffer.
It's the Justice who interprets the law. 800 million people are in prison right now in Brazil. They can say all their arrest are illegal. That doesn't mean anything.