X is now officially banned in #Brazil, with hefty fines if you're caught accessing it over a VPN. Not that I'm a fan of Musk or his policies, but I'm not a fan of governments controlling their citizens' Internet access either. And I agree with Musk in this case: it is #censorship. :(

Anyway, if you follow any Brazilian accounts on #X, whom you have alternate means of contacting (email or other social networks or WhatsApp/Signal/etc), hit them up and invite them to the #Fediverse!

https://techcentral.co.za/x-is-now-banned-in-brazil/250763/?utm_source=MastodonAfrica

@GrahamDowns you know the policy is bad when it makes the Musk look like a good guy. 😆😆😆

@GrahamDowns worrying that users can be penalised, and not just X

@drose @GrahamDowns
X is already banned by me.

@SolusSpider teehee @GrahamDowns

@drose 😆

@GrahamDowns This is hard. Brazil had the attempted coup-de-tat. They pushed back. They asked X to appoint a representative, or to engage, to limit the inflammatory material. AFAIK, X did not.
In SA, we have a constitution that balances freedom of speech with privacy and no hate speech. We need to find that for global scale communications, for corporations bigger than most countries, but with no direction or "moral compass" other than to make more money or the whims of the C-suite.

@drose
I haven't looked too closely as I don't care much, but it seems the causes are: not removing misinformation posts, a large amount of unpaid fines, refusal to appoint a legal representative, and threatening the judge.

I agree that the fine for using VPN is excessive.
@GrahamDowns

@GrahamDowns Xitter co-operates with criminal investigations in its "home" country, why not in others? The VPN ban will hopefully bring the tech to the attention of millions of future users!

@GrahamDowns 3 posts under your post in my feed:

https://mastodon.social/@nande/113058283812427262

FWIW I support the ban. I hope the EU and others follow suit!