nothing good usually comes out of governments censoring internet
I don't really know anything about Lula (I wouldn't have known this was Brazil if it wasn't explicitly mentioned, I only know from the Wikipedia page 30 seconds ago that their full name is Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and "Lula" is a nickname), so I can't say if they're "fine" or "evil", but one does not simply get to disregard the implications of censorship (of anyone, let alone a political party) when it happens to be done by a private corporation.
Especially when it's a foreign private corporation that's already deeply suspicious for political interference in multiple nations, as Meta is.
But it's a multimillion dollar corporation in a foreign country, to me the idea they owe you something is strange
---
Governments are still more powerful than corporations, this is why I am more afraid of the censorship of the internet by governments than of it by corporations
Meta can do whatever they want, but so can a sovereign nation if they deem Meta was actively subverting their democratic process.
> Governments are still more powerful than corporations
Corporations aren't all equal. And Meta is one of the most unequal. Add to that the relationship with Trump's government, and your 'corporations' argument is meaningless.
If it were some other mutli-national that doesn't have its own massively popular news platform, I'd be much more likely to agree.
To borrow the EU's language, Meta is a "gatekeeper".
> But it's a multimillion dollar corporation in a foreign country, to me the idea they owe you something is strange
You misunderstand: I do not claim they owe us anything. At least, not in this regard.
What I claim is that nobody owes them anything either.
They want to be the platform? Then speech occurring on it is not theirs.
They wish to perform acts of censorship? Then they cannot be "the platform". With emphasis on "the", because if they were simply "a" platform this wouldn't be any bigger a deal than a newspaper picking a side.
I don't actually know if Meta is close to being a monopoly in Brazil, that's just kinda an assumption on my part owning to the other legal cases against them for knowingly making their products addictive.
Sure mate, disregard the fact that some companies make more money than half the countries in the world and are actively trying to undermine democracies, but yeah it's the government's fault for trying to protect the citizens.
So if someone thinks this is illegal, it's only illegal until a court says so. It can be in clear violation of the law but until a judge says it is they can pretend they 'interpret' things differently
wrong. Blocking Facebook in China because they didn't follow domestic laws was the best thing that happened to the Chinese internet. It enabled the growth of domestic platforms like WeChat, Weibo and Tiktok.
First of all, nothing good has ever come out of meta.
Secondly, restricting election interference seems like an unalloyed positive.
This ideological fear of democratic structures ignores the very real threat of autocratic, privately owned structures consolidating more and more power.
The only viable counterweight to corporate power is public power.
And it wasn't that long ago.
I often use Study Together which is a large discord server (50k users online) for folks to work and study in groups/body doubles, but someone told me a lot of Brazilians have to use VPN to circumvent the ban.
From where I am, one third of politicians in recent elections have tiktok. It's a shame, everyone knows about human rights violation in China but the european politicians have no issues with using tiktok.
It's already a requirement that to operate in Brazil they need local representation. Someone local who can be prosecuted, even if it's just a proxy - I'm hazy on the details but I remember reading about this at one point when they went after Twitter.
Is it going to fully stop Brazilians from using the service? Most likely not, but it will almost certainly reduce their usage, and the remaining users become a less profitable product to Meta, since they're not going to see ads for companies they can actually spend money on.
This changes incentives and may well be enough to make Meta rethink their policies. Or not, but then its effects can be measured and adjusted.
Rather than banning individuals right to access a site, and then playing technical whackamole, you make that company's ability to operate in a country illegal. this puts the incentives and the technical onus where it belongs.
Again not saying they should or I support the notion of banning a site. Just that there are practical legislative solutions.
I'll say the opposite: Every single place that has banned American social media is better for it. Every group of people denied access to American social media are healthier and happier for it.
How would you go on a ad campaign against Facebook, using Facebook ads, where Facebook have already blocked your ads?
I don't know the exact media landscape of this world any more, but I can say I don't personally own a TV and can't even remember when I last watched live, and given all the TVs in stores sell themselves on how "smart" they are and which streaming services they work with I don't want to guess what normal viewing habits are.
Similarly, the closest I get to radio ads are in podcasts. If I own a radio, it's been forgotten in the bottom of a box for years and at least two house moves.
I have no idea which companies are ultimately behind podcast ads.
Its like throwing a grenade into a goverment building and being surprised that the government now wants to prosecute you. It is a fair prosecution based on actions in that case.
Banning facebook might actually be a moral good for the internet but that's my personal opinion.
They are cancerous propaganda/idiocracy funnels that are destructive to every Western country. They should not be freely operating anywhere but American America of America, Inc (TM Trump Inc).