Elon Musk’s satellite-based internet service provider Starlink backtracked late on Tuesday and said it would accept and enforce a Brazilian supreme court justice’s order to block the billionaire’s social media platform, X, formerly Twitter.
Previously, Starlink informally told the telecommunications regulator Anatel that it would not comply until Justice Alexandre de Moraes reversed course. Now, Starlink has said in a statement posted on X that it will heed de Moraes’s order despite him having frozen the company’s assets.
“Regardless of the illegal treatment of Starlink in freezing our assets, we are complying with the order to block access to X in Brazil,” the company statement said. “We continue to pursue all legal avenues, as are others who agree that @alexandre’s recent order violate the Brazilian constitution.”
Musk has been relentlessly posting in recent days, lambasting de Moraes as a criminal.
“This evil tyrant is a disgrace to judges’ robes,” Musk wrote on X alongside a photo of de Moraes some 17 hours before Starlink announced its decision to comply with the order. He has not posted about the company’s operations in Brazil since its announcement.
De Moraes froze Starlink’s accounts last week as a means to compel it to cover X’s fines that already exceeded $3m, reasoning that the two companies are part of the same economic group. Starlink filed an appeal, its law firm Veirano told the Associated Press on 30 August, but has declined to comment further in the days since.
Days later, the justice ordered the suspension of X over the social media company’s refusal to name a local legal representative, as required in order to receive notifications of court decisions and swiftly take any requisite action – particularly, in X’s case, the takedown of accounts. A supreme court panel unanimously upheld the block on Monday, undermining efforts by Musk and his supporters to cast the justice as an authoritarian renegade intent on censoring political speech in Brazil.
Had Starlink continued to disobey de Moraes by providing access, Anatel could eventually have seized equipment from Starlink’s 23 ground stations that ensure the quality of its internet service, Artur Coimbra, an Anatel board member, said on a video call from his office in Brasília.
Already, some legal experts have questioned de Moraes’s basis for freezing Starlink’s accounts, given that its parent company, SpaceX, has no integration with X. Musk noted on X that the two companies have different shareholder structures.
X has clashed with de Moraes over its reluctance to block users – mostly far-right activists accused of undermining Brazilian democracy and allies of the former president Jair Bolsonaro – and has alleged that de Moraes wants an in-country legal representative so that Brazilian authorities can exert leverage over the company by having someone to arrest.
The reversal comes as a relief to those in Brazil who have come to depend on Starlink, though. The company has said it has more than 250,000 customers in the country, many of whom are in remote areas that would not have fast internet access otherwise.
Before Starlink, internet access in many of these areas came from slow, unstable fixed antennae. Its easy-to-install kits and high-quality connections have transformed communication in some communities, surpassing even major Amazonian cities in speed.
While Brazil’s massive territory with vast rural and forested areas makes it a key growth market for Starlink, its presence isn’t yet as large as Musk has led some to believe. Since January 2022, when Starlink began operations in Brazil, it has captured a 0.5% share of the internet market, trailing significantly behind leading providers, according to Anatel.
Although Starlink has retreated and says it will now block X, Musk’s bravado in recent days has boosted his hero status in the eyes of his fans, said Marietje Schaake, the international policy director at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center.
“The battle of the titans, between de Moraes and Musk, reminds us of how powerful, political and provocative tech leaders have become,” said Schaake. “Brazil won’t be that last country to seek accountability or to put up guardrails.”
Source: theguardian.com
