The impact of the X ban on Brazil’s social media freedom and on the investigation of censorship in the geopolitical news media
A similar progression has taken place with the X ban. Brazil’s 20,000 ISPs produce a notably competitive market, but only a few have infrastructure nationwide. About 40 percent are tiny regional providers with 5,000 customers or fewer. The human and digital rights watchdog Freedom House rates Brazil’s internet freedom as “partly free” and trending to be more restrictive, because of the country’s far-reaching efforts to crack down on political misinformation in recent years and its three-day ban on Telegram. The Brazilian government blocked the messaging platform in December 2015, and again in May 2016 because it didn’t respond to data requests.
VPN usage has surged in Brazil this week under the ban as a way around ISP attempts to block X, but the court order ban includes a provision stating people could be charged a fine of 50,000 reais—around $8,900—per day for using circumvention tools like VPNs.
Mobile apps like X’s Android and iOS apps don’t rely on DNS, though, so DNS filtering alone is not enough to block all connections to a web platform. Some Brazilian internet service providers are sending online traffic to a different server than they intended to, orsinkholing, in order to send traffic meant for X into the oblivion.
The open observatory reported that the progression began when Brazil’s Federal Police obtained a court order to block Telegram because it would not give them the information they needed about neo-Nazi group chats. Telegram was being blocked by some large internet service providers. “However, the block was not implemented by all ISPs in Brazil, nor was it implemented in the same way,” the group wrote. “This suggests lack of coordination between providers, and that each ISP implemented the block autonomously.”
But X and Musk have been having an unusually rough time in the public eye over the past few weeks. X was ordered to remove some accounts and content by the TSE in Brazil, which said that they spread disinformation about the integrity of the country’s elections. The country is X’s third largest market, and for months, Musk has railed against Moraes online, calling him a dictator, accusing the court of censorship, and even comparing him to the Harry Potter villain Lord Voldemort.
Starlink was caught in the crosshairs too: The court froze the assets of Musk’s other company, saying that it was part of the same “economic group” as X given its ownership, for possible use to pay off fines owed by X. When the block came into effect Monday, Starlink allowed its customers—over 250,000 people, according to the company— to circumvent the X ban by using its satellite internet connection. After the initial resistance, Starlink relented and said it would comply. Experts who spoke to WIRED say that increasingly, it seems that Musk has overplayed his hand.
“I think he is realizing Brazilians are not going to take to the streets because X is suspended,” says Nina Santos, a researcher at the Brazilian National Institute of Science & Technology for Digital Democracy. “Brazilian institutions are not going to back off just because Musk is cursing online.”
Musk was antagonizing the court. Last week, he posted a seemingly AI-generated image of Moraes behind bars (which was later deleted), with the accompanying text alleging, “One day, Alexandre, this picture of you in prison will be real,” and another comparing him to the Harry Potter villain Voldemort.
Bruna claims that he has been trying to influence the image of the Supreme Court in a problematic way since April. He knew what the consequences would be, and he was fully aware.
Twitter Sensitivities to the Suspension of Social Media in Brazil: A Case Study of Elon Musk and a GOP Consulting Firm
Less than two years after taking over Twitter, now X, Elon Musk has managed to lose the company access to its third largest market and reportedly over 40 million users. And despite his bravado online, he seems to have backed himself into a corner.
X seems to be working with a Republican consulting group, seemingly to handle the messaging around the suspension of social media in Brazil.
The head of global affairs announced his resignation on Thursday and investors are blaming it for the poor performance of their investments.
For nearly a year, the auto response to the press email returned the poop emoji. The auto-response says that it’s busy now and to check back later.
Journalists often do not receive a reply when they contact the press team at X, but that email response from Targeted Victory is particularly notable. In his first few years at the company, Musk decided to lay off a large number of employees. The move included the platform’s trust and safety team, the people who keep hate speech off the platform, and the company’s communications team.
The group has had other tech companies work with them. The Washington Post reported that Meta hired Targeted Victory to create a negative public opinion about TikTok. The messaging campaign focused on framing TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, as a threat to Americans’ privacy and to the mental health of teens and children.
Source: X Is Working With a GOP Consulting Firm
Reply to Abboud’s e-mail to WIRED on the suspension of the Targeted Victory campaign platform in Brazil
In his emailed reply, Abboud referred WIRED to a company statement from X about the suspension of the platform in Brazil, and said to reach out with further questions.
Targeted Victory has had contracts with several Republican campaigns and political action committees (PACs) this election season to the tune of over $75 million, according to OpenSecrets. The biggest client of the group is the Republican National Committee, who spent over $11 million on the firm during a two year period.
When WIRED asked X about the situation in Brazil, a reply was sent from the managing director of Targeted Victory. According to his LinkedIn, Abboud worked for the State Department in the last year of the Trump administration and as press secretary for former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s campaign.