Brazil Supreme Court unfreezes X, Starlink's bank accounts after taking $3.3M

> The platform has been blocked in the country of 220 million since the end of last month.

Actually, 203 million. The 2018 estimate was 214 million, which was corrected in the 2022 census. Kinda crazy that it was overestimated by 11M.

vitorgrs · a year ago

Well... the estimation for 2024 [1] is 212 million...

So it seems very likely that the 2022 census was also wrong (there was budget cuts on the institute who do the census, and it had several problems on doing it).

This was a big discussion here...

¹https://agenciadenoticias.ibge.gov.br/agencia-noticias/2012-...

piva00 · a year ago

2022 census had lots of issues, IBGE (Brazil's statistics institute) was underfunded due to Bolsonaro's policies.

Dead Comment

It's absolutely amazing to see a large fraction of of otherwise reasonable people supporting censorship by fairly problematic governments because 'musk bad'.

Is there a name for this phenomenon? Kind of seems like a reverse ad hominem.

TiredOfLife · a year ago

It's called human nature. Everything i like is good, everything i don't is bad.

fooker · a year ago

It seems more nuanced.

X (government abuse of online censorship, not Twitter) is bad. Bad person Y says X is bad. Now suddenly X is good.

The irony being that everyone equated Y with batman a year or two ago.

philistine · a year ago

There is zero possibility in your mind not that the Brazilian government is indeed correct, but that Elon Musk is a huge hypocrite and that how he navigates this bad situation displays how dangerous he is?

fooker · a year ago

Elon Musk being a huge hypocrite/ dangerous/etc doesn't have any bearing on whether governments should have the power to snoop on private conversations online and block out voices they disagree with on a case by case basis.

Dead Comment

rmellow · a year ago

elashri · a year ago

The original title is more obvious. The current title should be modified

> "Brazil unfreezes Starlink, X assets after $3.3M transfer"

noisy_boy · a year ago

I don't know why we need to use taking or transfer, that doesn't make it clear what the taking/transfer was - just say "payment of $3.3M fines".

nickff · a year ago

This seems more like a confiscation than a payment; you might argue that’s a semantic difference, but it’s more clear.

adastra22 · a year ago

Native English speaker here. Aren't they roughly identical, other than the passive voice?

dxyms · a year ago

Maybe it’s more obvious they didn’t unblock X, only their assets

thebiglebrewski · a year ago

I don't get it. Why is Starlink paying for X's problems? Aren't the two separate corporate entities?

blackeyeblitzar · a year ago

Yes they are each separate entities with a different mix of owners and investors. This is happening because this judge is waging a corrupt personal war against Musk instead of acting professionally.

sunflowerfly · a year ago

Because Starlink is an ISP and refused to follow the judges order to block x.

ivewonyoung · a year ago

No, they eventually decided to block X. This freezing was done even before the ban on X because the judge wants to put Starlink at peril.

jonny_eh · a year ago

Does this also mean X complied with the order to ban those accounts?

hiddencost · a year ago

The title is poorly edited by the poster.

They didn't unblock Twitter, they unblocked their assets held in the country.

No. X/Starlink didn't pay any fine, either. The accounts were locked by Justice order, and now transferred to the Federal Government.

They are just unfreezing because they already got the fines.