Suspending X: Brazil’s Ongoing Struggle to Govern Big Tech

We live in a scary world where someone with Elon Musk’s reach and influence can call a Brazilian Supreme Court judge an “evil dictator” and threaten him with imprisonment with apparent impunity, so it’s easy sometimes to miss what’s behind the news and the inflammatory tweets.

You might hear a lot about the suspension of X (formerly Twitter) in Brazil as a violation of free speech, which is the framing Musk prefers, arguing that the actions taken by Brazilian authorities are politically motivated attacks against his companies. But the real reason X has been suspended is that X has refused to comply with directives to name a legal representative in Brazil and remove certain accounts accused of spreading disinformation and inciting unrest.​

What’s most striking about Musk’s tone is his apparent disbelief at Brazil’s audacity to challenge and potentially block his platform. It raises the question: why should Majority World countries be expected to accept Big Tech platforms uncritically, as though these platforms are the sole harbingers of development and free speech?

Now, the irony isn’t completely lost on me that the reported heir of an emerald mining family is pretending not to understand why companies extracting value while completely disregarding the negative impact of their business activities is bad. In fact, this isn’t even the first case for one of Musk’s companies in Brazil.

As Lua Cruz argues brilliantly in this article titled “Starlink in the Amazon: Reflections on Humbleness,” Starlink’s introduction to Brazil also carries the same complexities that illustrate how Big Tech techsolutionism and colonial legacies intertwine. Despite expecting a wholly negative impression of Starlink based on the media coverage, by visiting the affected communities and seeing the effects of Starlink on the ground, the complexity of the situation became readily apparent.

While the widely reported negative impacts of disrupting the social fabric and the environmental effects of such technologies do have a toll and are somewhat acknowledged by the communities, the people of the Amazons have been also able to use the technology to their advantage.

Cruz observes that Starlink has brought internet access to Amazon communities previously isolated from digital infrastructure, facilitating access to essential services, improving communication, and enabling territorial monitoring. Moreover, Cruz highlights that communication networks can empower communities by supporting civic rights, such as the right to organize, express opinions, and engage in public decision-making.

“Communities have shown resilience and adaptability in the face of such changes, often finding ways to integrate new technologies in ways that support their needs and goals. However, this resilience should not be taken as a justification for disregarding the potential harms”

While these benefits are significant, they do not erase the ethical concerns surrounding the deployment of such technologies without full engagement with the communities involved. It’s also important to understand how we got here in the first place. The very fact that Starlink has been able to position itself in this tech savior role can be attributed to years of neglect by the state and its deference to the private sector and international companies.

In contrast with the X case, this is an example where the state has failed in its duty, in particular to provide the people with meaningful access to the internet. Instead, they left that role to Starlink and the major corporations exploiting the Amazons who are financing the antennas. The danger of letting these technosolutionist approaches fill the void left by the state is that they often fail to engage meaningfully with affected communities and often overlook complex socio-political dynamics at play in favour of simplistic tech savior narratives.

Technosolutionism is often defined as the idea that any problem can be simply solved with technology, but it’s actually more complex than that, especially when it intersects with colonialism and imperialism. You can tell an approach is technosolutionist when it treats Indigenous communities as passive recipients of “technological aid”, rather than recognizing them as active agents with their own voices, needs, and complexities.

This disenfranchisement of Indigenous voices can often lead to disastrous consequences when they’re not involved in the governance of the technologies deployed for their supposed benefit. After all, the same communication networks that enable participation and access are the ones that can potentially bring disinformation in, as evidenced by the X case.

But when the “tech saviour” fails to deliver on their lofty promises, it is never the technology’s fault. The author brings up the example of how the rather nuanced coverage of Starlink in Brazil by the New York Times was picked up and reduced to racist caricatures by other media outlets, including Brazilian ones, whereas the critique of Starlink was less emphasized or ignored in those derivative reports.

Musk’s refusal to comply with Brazil’s judicial system is yet another a textbook example of this technological imperialism, cloaked in the guise of defending free speech. After all, his disregard for the socio-political impact of his companies is evident; after acquiring Twitter, his first moves included dismantling teams focused on public policy, human rights, accessibility (!) and content moderation.

At the end of the day, X should face the consequences of its business activities in Brazil. Brazil, alongside other Majority World countries, must assert their right and duty to regulate Big Tech, ensuring they respect local public policy and human rights. Ideally, all communities should have both the agency and the sovereignty over technologies that affect their lives, and tech companies should engage with them as such. Please read Lua Cruz’s full article on The Green Web Foundation website.