David Inserra
On August 31, Brazil’s judiciary blocked X from being available in the country due to X’s refusal to secretly censor important political content. This includes content from accounts outside Brazil and even sitting legislators. More radically, the rogue justice Alexandre Moraes ordered app stores to block various virtual private networks (VPNs) and created a brand new penalty for Brazilians who managed to access X through a VPN.
While the original order to block VPNs was rescinded, a panel of the Brazilian Supreme Court upheld the banning of X and the new fine. At around $9,000, the fine is approximately equal to the income of the average Brazilian. The Brazilian court obviously holds X responsible for its failure to obey their censorial orders. But levying such a punishing fine on Brazilians for merely speaking their mind online shows how far authoritarians must go to effectively ban a speech platform.
Brazil’s judiciary didn’t stop there. Moraes also froze the bank accounts of Starlink, the company dedicated to providing internet via satellite. Since Elon Musk had closed X’s Brazilian office, Moraes felt it necessary to go after one of Musk’s other unrelated companies. It’s bad enough to see legal authorities plundering other companies to satisfy their grudge against Musk, but to make matters worse Starlink isn’t completely owned by Musk. He owns about half of Starlink, which means that Brazilian authorities are also going after the half of the company that belongs to other investors.
In response, Starlink initially refused to block X on its internet services, before eventually capitulating to Brazilian demands. Had Starlink refused, Brazil’s authorities could have banned Starlink and its service to over a quarter-million Brazilians. While Brazil’s authoritarians can’t quite get their hands on Starlinks’s satellites, they could have tried to seize the ground terminals in a move that would have significantly harmed internet availability in Brazil, especially among users in its vast rural areas.
Silencing political speech that is critical of the current government, threatening one’s citizens with massive fines for merely posting online, freezing the assets owned by international investors, being willing to cut off the internet to hundreds of thousands—these are not the actions of a liberal democracy but of tyrants. Even prominent supporters of the Brazilian judiciary’s censorial tactics believe these new actions have crossed the Rubicon.
Moraes and the courts more generally have seized new powers to act as the victim, prosecutor, judge, juror, and executioner. Their orders go against the clear letter of Brazilian law and constitutional protections for speech, and lack any real sense of due process, often being issued in secret and with little explanation for what law the targeted content or individuals violated.
Unfortunately, the response to such lawlessness from the US has been nonexistent. The Biden administration has not issued a statement on the attacks on American companies, investors, and principles in Brazil. The same is true in response to the assaults on US companies coming from the European Union and other nations. The absence of a formal response to such aggression is being felt by American companies and citizens as a growing number of nations take aim at free expression and the technology companies that enable it.
Even more disquieting is the support such censorship is receiving from some American elites. Democratic commentator Robert Reich, for instance, wrote an op-ed in The Guardian calling for international regulators to “threaten Musk with arrest if he doesn’t stop disseminating lies and hate on X” and for the US government to stop contracting with Space X and use the FTC to sue Musk because his speech rights aren’t in “the public interest.” Keith Ellison, the attorney general for Minnesota Gov. Walz, explicitly posted in support of the Brazilian censorship. Similarly, too many politicos have praised or collaborated with the EU’s regulatory morass to protect societies from hate speech and misinformation.
The New York Times, in its otherwise worthwhile story on the situation, summarized this view of the conflict with the following choice. “Do too little and allow online chatter to undermine democracy; do too much and restrict citizens’ legitimate speech.”
This idea that allowing free people to engage in “online chatter” undermines democracy is flat-out wrong. Free expression is what allows people to rule themselves by debating policies and who their leaders are. Yes, often that process is ugly and contains various falsehoods, half-truths, and offensive speech from all sides. But the government cannot be an arbiter of what is true and false or what is good or bad. That is left to the democratic process and free, liberal inquiry. To do otherwise is to somehow pretend that we can advance tolerance, freedom, and democracy by being intolerant, suppressing freedom, and cutting off democratic debate.
Brazil’s suppression of X, its citizens, and international investors ought to be met with a pro-expression response from the US. A formal diplomatic repudiation should be easy enough. And while there are plenty of programs that deserve to be cut from the US’s foreign aid budget, the current situation in Brazil calls for Congress to scrutinize and cut taxpayer dollars going to Brazil.
Failure to push back against a growing tide of censorship will only result in a future that is less free and prosperous.