Elon Finally Finds A Government He’s Willing To Stand Up To: When The Censorship Demands Target His Political Allies

Free Speech

from the it's-not-principles-when-it-only-helps-your-buddies dept

Over the last few years, Elon Musk has repeatedly said that his definition of free speech means “that which matches the law.”

He says this whenever anyone calls out that he’s not actually the free speech absolutist he claims to be. He regularly and expeditiously caves in to censorship demands, without any protest, from authoritarian governments in places like India and Turkey. When those governments demand Musk remove speech of government critics, his response is to do so immediately (and in the case of India, globally) while insisting that nothing can be done, he’s just following the laws.

However, there’s now a big story brewing in Brazil. Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes is demanding the removal of content that was spreading nonsense in support of former President Jair Bolsonaro. This is regarding the Brazilian equivalent of the January 6th storming of the Capitol in the US, when Bolsonaro supporters stormed the Brazilian Congress on January 8, 2023.

ExTwitter originally agreed to take down the content, but Musk reversed that decision.

That’s a post from ExTwitter’s global affairs team saying at 2:52pm on April 6th:

X Corp. has been forced by court decisions to block certain popular accounts in Brazil. We have informed those accounts that we have taken this action. 

We do not know the reasons these blocking orders have been issued.  We do not know which posts are alleged to violate the law. 

We are prohibited from saying which court or judge issued the order, or on what grounds. 

We are prohibited from saying which accounts are impacted.  We are threatened with daily fines if we fail to comply. 

We believe that such orders are not in accordance with the Marco Civil da Internet or the Brazilian Federal Constitution, and we challenge the orders legally where possible.

The people of Brazil, regardless of their political beliefs, are entitled to freedom of speech, due process, and transparency from their own authorities. 

Less than one hour later, Musk announced the decision was lifted.

To be absolutely clear: I applaud this decision by Musk to finally stand up to a nonsense, censorial government demand. It’s about time he did so. It’s just notable that he only seems to have done it when it came in support of Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing extremist. And it never happens when the demands are coming from right-wing extremist governments.

It’s almost as if Musk’s support of free speech is highly conditional. Which is the same thing as saying he’s not a free speech supporter at all. He simply supports those he aligns with politically and pushes back against those he disagrees with politically.

For what it’s worth, we’ve highlighted Brazil’s slip-sliding down the slope of censorship before. We mentioned this very Alexandre de Moraes, back when he was a government minister. Indeed, de Moraes has built up a reputation as a censorial asshat. So I’m glad that someone is pushing back. But it sure does seem quite selective by Musk.

When he says “we follow the laws of the country,” it’s noteworthy when he follows through on that, and when he suddenly pretends to take a stand for free speech.

Meanwhile, Musk made sure to play to his fans who believe he’s always willing to stand up for free speech. He did this by directly replying to de Moraes on ExTwitter asking why he was demanding so much “censorship” in Brazil (de Moraes’ tweet has nothing to do with any of this).

In response, de Moraes announced an “investigation” into Musk.

Musk has said that he will continue to fight this, even if it means having to pull out of Brazil altogether:

If, as Musk says, “principles matter more than profit,” then how does he square that with the fact that he was willing to comply basically everywhere else? Remember, a study from last year found that Elon complied with over 80% of government takedown requests, significantly up from the around 50% under the old regime.

So, seriously, it’s great that Elon is fighting this one particularly problematic judge. But the fact remains that he caves basically everywhere else and throws up a nonsense “we believe in complying with the laws.” Except in this case.

That’s not principles. It’s supporting friends. Which is anything but being a free speech supporter.

Filed Under: alexandre de moraes, brazil, censorship, elon musk, free speech
Companies: twitter, x