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With the recent news of X being banned in Brazil, it seems we're entering a new stage of the ongoing battle between major, multinational corporations and governments.
A common talking point on the left is that Musk is making a hissy fit out of Brazil, but has been happy in the past to censor for 'outgroup' countries like Turkey, China, et cetera. While I haven't looked into the truth of these claims, I think it's interesting to take them at face value, and ask why that's a problem exactly?
We have clear evidence that Facebook, Insta, Twitter, etc all heavily and not even secretly censored anti-right wing information (and even just true information) during the Covid pandemic especially, but also around other, more political topics.
So in this case, I suppose the question comes down to - if most people on the left think that censoring information during covid and around the 2020 election was fair game, why is it not fair game when someone on the 'other side' does it back to them?
Now personally I think that the censorship around covid was far more egregious, but again I'm hoping to pose a general question about freedom of speech, especially for these incredibly powerful media tech companies. Are we entering an era where elections are mostly decided based on corporate censorship? Are governments going to just cede power to the technarchs gently, or will there be more and more lawfare against them?
I don't think e.g. Brazil can really pressure someone like Musk much, but the battle between him and the EU, as well as the left side of the U.S. government, is certainly worth keeping an eye on.
Furthermore, how is Brazil banning X different from the US banning TikTok?
I suppose the US followed a lot more legal process around it (it was an act of Congress signed by the President) and isn't so much banning it as demanding that its principals fall under US jurisdiction, and at least the cover story is not over suppressing speech but around guaranteeing that the CCP isn't conducting surveillance on every American.
In broad strokes it feels the same though?
Tiktok is a national security threat in a way that X is not.
With Tiktok, Chinese intelligence gains a great deal of data about the U.S. military and intelligence, including the location of many or all of our secret bases and personal details about the people who work in them.
From a security standpoint, X isn't a threat because they are the least likely to share data with foreign governments. It's only a threat to those who wish to censor alternative viewpoints.
you claim to care about free speech but isn't sending information about secret bases and military personnel to the CCP a form of speech? :thinking:
jk jk
isn't the Brazil judge making a similar national security argument though? not around secrets but around public order? X is fostering hate speech and supporting the return of the deplorable Bolsanaro elements, or whatever?
It seems to me there's a non-trivial distinction between shutting down a network to try to prevent influence and data gathering by a semi-hostile foreign government, and shutting down a network to try to silence domestic political speech.
I don't think you could openly do the latter in the US. Though if Harris is elected, I won't be shocked if Musk is indicted on some tenuous securities charge to try to force him out of his companies in favor of more accommodating leadership.
All the big social media companies almost certainly employ spies that are exfiltrating data.
If I were running Chinese intelligence I'd think it smart to Br'er Rabbit the Americans about banning Tik Tok. If they actually do it then maybe they'll rest on their laurels a bit thinking they've actually accomplished something. It also provides a blow to their supposed principled stance on free speech, and the debate itself is a good distraction from my lesser known methods of collecting data.
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I'm pro free speech, but the distinction seems pretty blurry. Twitter is also gathering data, for sure, and I'm pretty sure you could also portray what they're doing as "influence". I guess it all depends on your relationship to the United States.
I justify my anti-TokTok stance by it being an ADHD-inducing brainrot machine, not by any political influence it has.
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But of course, any domestic political speech you don't like can always be easily painted as influence of a (semi-)hostile foreign government. What's more, any hostile foreign government worth their chops will try to influence your domestic political speech.
Under US law, I think this would also be fairly distinct from the TikTok ban. Allegations of foreign influence don't get you past prohibitions on viewpoint discrimination here. The TikTok ban is (probably) legal only because it hinges on a structural fact about TikTok (foreign ownership) rather than targeting any particular viewpoint.
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