> "The decision to freeze Starlink's accounts stems from a separate dispute over unpaid fines X was ordered to pay due to its failure to turn over some documents."
This is deliberately misleading. The dispute stems from X having revealed a history of the government of Brazil demanding it censor and deanonymize political opponents and people alleging corruption, and refusing to continue doing so.
X refused to comply with court order. That would not fly in the US either.
Court issues fine and threatens further action.
X closes the office in Brazil to keep ignoring rulings.
Court gives ultimatum for obeying the order or appoint legal representative in the country.
Starlink is grouped as part of the same "economic group" and has its accounts frozen. This is the most arguable decision here so far. Still most agree it would be issued anyways but more steps were necessary for that. It's not about who owns but about who controls it.
After the end of the ultimatum period, court order the blocking of X to every ISP operating in Brazil.
Starlink shoots itself in the foot and refuses the order proving they're not as separate to X as some argue.
Next episodes to follow.
Even their tactic here is weird. "Were not gonna follow court orders until our accounts are unfrozen" instead of complying and properly appealing. They appealed using the wrong process and the judge itself wrote that it was weirdly on purpose because they admitted that they knew the right procedure but seem to want to collect bad decisions to garner sympathy
In theory Brazil could try to force SpaceX to stop by taking legal action through the US court system, or administrative action through the international bodies that coordinate satellite communications frequencies and orbits, but that would be unlikely to work.
Oh by the way, there seems there's going to be a very large fine for Brazilians circumventing the block to access ex-Twitter. So it may just be on the client side, if anything actually happens.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/07/world/americas/brazil-pol...
It's amusing how in other cases, social media companies and tech companies get shit upon for adhering to the rulings of certain autocratic, censoring governments, but then if one actually makes pretty evidently firm stand as in this case, it's suddenly an irresponsible and reckless thing.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMajorityReport/comments/13h0qon/...