They are champions of unapologetic self-expression and style.
They are Refinery29 Powerhouses.
(On the page, there is a list, with names hyperlinked to read any and all at your convenience. It’s good to know about outstanding people. -Ali)
https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/refinery29-powerhouses-list-2024
Benjamin Netanyahu is as obtuse as Donald Trump Read on Substack
Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth has revealed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu killed a ceasefire and hostage release agreement last July. The report is based on a document the newspaper obtained. Bibi killed the deal by proposing a raft of new demands at the 11th hour.
Among those demands was that Israel retain control of the Egypt-Gaza border area – a condition Netanyahu has since portrayed as non-negotiable, including at a press conference on Wednesday.
Last week, the Israeli Defense Force found six dead Israeli hostages. Yedioth Ahronoth also reported that at least three of the six hostages, Carmel Gat, Aden Yerushalmi, and Hersh Goldberg-Polin were due for release as part of the May draft agreement.
The other three hostages murdered are Ori Danino, Almog Sarusi, and Alex Lobanov.
An Israeli source familiar with the talks said Netanyahu’s demands were to blame for the deaths of the hostages over the weekend. Netanyahu, who’s already a war criminal wanted by the International Criminal Court, is responsible for the deaths of at least 40,000 Palestinians. I have to look the number up every time I write about this because it keeps rising.
Much like Vladimir Putin, Netanyahu bombs civilian targets.
The inside source told CNN that when Netanyahu put the obstacles up and said no to the deal, “The hostages died because he insisted.”
The Hostages Families Forum said the deaths are a “direct result of Netanyahu’s thwarting of the deals.”
Donald Trump does not care about people who died for our nation. When he visited Arlinton National Cemetary, he stood next to graves for a political photo-op of him giving his patented thumbs-up. Trump saw dead soldiers as a tool for his campaign.
Netanyahu, who’s as fascist, corrupt, heartless, and as selfish as Trump, sees dead hostages as a tool for his campaign…his campaign of war. Bibi refuses to end this war. In the current round of ceasefire negotiations, one of Bibi’s demands is that he can resume indiscriminately bombing Gaza anytime he wants. It’s a ceasefire for only one side to cease firing.
Hamas is a terrorist organization. We can’t forget that they’re murderers and kidnappers. There wouldn’t be any hostages to negotiate for if Hamas hadn’t kidnapped them. But we also can’t forget that Hamas is NOT Palestine. Palestinian civilians shouldn’t be cannon fodder for Netanyahu.
When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 last year, it was a gift for Netanyahu.
Drawn in 30 seconds: (go watch it on his page, linked here and up above.)
September 5, 2024 Ellen Phiddian
(Well, go figure!)
Telling tourists on the Great Barrier Reef about climate change doesn’t negatively affect their trip, according to a new study.
Instead, finds the research, it could be a good avenue to promote climate action for people who wouldn’t otherwise be engaged.
The study, done by a team of Queensland researchers, is published in People and Nature.
“Tourism operators are getting more engaged in learning how they can spread more awareness, given the state of the Reef and how urgent it’s getting,” says lead author Dr Yolanda Waters, an environmental social scientist at the University of Queensland.
“But they still have these concerns – what if it ruins people’s day? People pay a lot of money to go to the Reef.”
The team tested this concern by surveying 656 visitors on a variety of Reef tours that either did or didn’t mention climate change.
Waters tells Cosmos that her background working in Great Barrier Reef tourism provided the stimulus for the research.
“I used to work on the boats out of Cairns, and I went through these experiences of tourists asking questions and not really feeling equipped to answer them,” she says.
“There is this real feeling: how do we talk about this in a way that doesn’t negatively affect the industry?”
The researchers joined forces with 5 Reef tour operators in north Queensland to set up the experiment.
“We tried to get a range of different operators out of Cairns and Townsville, because we were also testing if it depends on the type of experience, the type of boat, if it’s 300 people or a smaller trip,” says Waters.
The researchers and tour staff developed control and experimental climate trips for each tour.
“It really depended on the boat and the type of trip,” says Waters.
“The operators let us work with their staff and design one trip that had no information about climate change specifically – they still had their regular information about marine life and regular day-to-day operations.
“And on other trips, they let us work with the staff to make sure climate change was very clearly incorporated throughout the day.”
This might include marine biologists’ presentations addressing climate change, videos, and posters.
“On the trip back, I went around and surveyed as many tourists as I could,” says Waters.
Visitors were asked to complete a 5-minute paper survey asking about their experience of the trip, and their engagement with climate change.
The researchers found that trips mentioning climate didn’t have a significant effect on visitors’ experiences.
“There was no overall effect on satisfaction,” says Waters.
People on both trips were interested in learning more about climate change.
“A lot of them wanted to have a chat about it, especially on days where there was no climate information on the boat – people noticed,” says Waters.
But people on trips with climate information weren’t any more likely to be spurred to action on climate change.
“We found that the climate information did increase people’s awareness about the threat, that information did get across to people, but we found that didn’t really translate to people’s willingness to do something when they went home,” says Waters.
This means that the information about climate change could be tweaked to be more solutions-focussed, according to the researchers.
“Our conclusion out of this, which aligns with some of the other research we’ve been doing, is that if tourism is to be this beacon of engaging people with climate change, it can’t just be talking about threats – people really want to know about solutions,” says Waters.
“Most people have no idea how they can help stop the ocean boiling. So that was the opportunity we identified.”
The research comes shortly after the release of the 2024 Great Barrier Reef Outlook report by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, which is compiled every 5 years.
The report found that, while parts of the Reef had declined and parts had improved, the overall state of the Reef remained “poor” and climate change was rapidly closing the window to preserve its health.
The researchers say in their paper that the tourism industry has an opportunity to promote action on climate change, provided it uses the right strategies.
“Two million people visit the Reef every year,” points out Waters. She adds that tourists often place a high amount of trust in the information given to them by guides.
“This is the right place and time to do it, but if tourism wants to really embrace the role, they need to start tailoring those talks and those education materials around solutions and actions that people can take home with them.”
Waters says the tourism operators the team worked with were “very receptive” to the study.
“I think tourism really does want to be on board,” she says.
“Tourism has to change, no matter what happens. And I think they’re starting to really recognise that.”
https://cosmosmagazine.com/earth/climate/climate-great-barrier-reef-tourism/
This is so cool!
September 4, 2024 Evrim Yazgin
Marmosets do something that only humans, dolphins and elephants have been known to do: give each other names.
“Phee-calls” – a specific vocal call – used to identify and communicate between individual marmosets are described in new research published in the journal Science. Listen:
https://players.brightcove.net/5483960636001/default_default/index.html?videoId=6361433757112
There are 22 species of marmoset native to South America and occasionally spotted in Central America. The generally live in small family groups of 2 to 8 individuals.
The common marmoset weighs just a few hundred grams and is about 19cm tall. They are easily recognised by their large, white ear tuffs.
Naming other individuals is a highly advanced cognitive skill in social animals. Interestingly, our closest evolutionary relatives, non-human primates, have until now appeared to lack this ability.
Researchers uncovered the phee-calls in marmosets by recording their conversations.
They found that, not only do the little monkeys use phee-calls to address specific individuals, they are also able to tell when a call was directed at them and responded more accurately when it was.
“This discovery highlights the complexity of social communication among marmosets,” explains study lead and senior author David Omer from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “These calls are not just used for self-localisation, as previously thought – marmosets use these specific calls to label and address specific individuals.”
The researchers also noticed marmosets within a family group used similar vocal labels to address different individuals. Adult marmosets were even able to learn the names of individuals they weren’t related to by blood.
Such vocalisations may help marmosets in dense rainforest habitats where visibility is limited.
Baby marmoset monkey named Bareket. Credit: David Omer’s Lab.
“Marmosets live in small monogamous family groups and take care of their young together, much like humans do,” says Omer. “These similarities suggest that they faced comparable evolutionary social challenges to our early pre-linguistic ancestors, which might have led them to develop similar communicating methods.”
Understanding how social communication developed in marmosets could help explain human language evolution.
In the Spring edition of Cosmos Magazine, Drew Rooke looks at the prospects of talking to whales, and Amalyah Hart looks at insect consciousness. Out September 26.
https://cosmosmagazine.com/nature/animals/marmoset-monkey-names/
Thanks to Zorba for this:
Read it sometime when you have a few minutes. It’s a fine little break from school shootings, etc. I was surprised by some new ideas for movies, and am looking forward to seeing a couple of these, at least.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Updated 4:07 PM CDT, September 3, 2024
The seasonal differences of the movie calendar have eroded a little bit with time. Neither of the last two Oscar juggernauts — “Oppenheimer,” “Everything Everywhere All at Once” — opened in the fall, the traditional launching pad of Academy Awards hopefuls.
And just the same, f all tends to be nearly as stuffed as summer is with sequels, horror thrillers and would-be blockbusters. Still, some of the old rules still apply. A large percentage of 2024’s best movies are set to unspool in the coming months.
So with that in mind, here are some of the most anticipated films of this fall, from large to small and everything in between. (Snip-there are many-scroll on through on the page while enjoying a nice cool/warm drink of something, and/or some ice cream.)
This seems important.
By DAVID KLEPPER Updated 11:56 AM CDT, September 3, 2024
WASHINGTON (AP) — When he first emerged on social media, the user known as Harlan claimed to be a New Yorker and an Army veteran who supported Donald Trump for president. Harlan said he was 29, and his profile picture showed a smiling, handsome young man.
A few months later, Harlan underwent a transformation. Now, he claimed to be 31 and from Florida.
New research into Chinese disinformation networks targeting American voters shows Harlan’s claims were as fictitious as his profile picture, which analysts think was created using artificial intelligence.
As voters prepare to cast their ballots this fall, China has been making its own plans, cultivating networks of fake social media users designed to mimic Americans. Whoever or wherever he really is, Harlan is a small part of a larger effort by U.S. adversaries to use social media to influence and upend America’s political debate.
The account was traced back to Spamouflage, a Chinese disinformation group, by analysts at Graphika, a New York-based firm that tracks online networks. Known to online researchers for several years, Spamouflage earned its moniker through its habit of spreading large amounts of seemingly unrelated content alongside disinformation.
“One of the world’s largest covert online influence operations — an operation run by Chinese state actors — has become more aggressive in its efforts to infiltrate and to sway U.S. political conversations ahead of the election,” Jack Stubbs, Graphika’s chief intelligence officer, told The Associated Press.
Intelligence and national security officials have said that Russia, China and Iran have all mounted online influence operations targeting U.S. voters ahead of the November election. Russia remains the top threat, intelligence officials say, even as Iran has become more aggressive in recent months, covertly supporting U.S. protests against the war in Gaza and attempting to hack into the email systems of the two presidential candidates. (snip-More)
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryseptember.htm#september4
| September 4, 1949 |
| Paul Robeson, scholar, athlete, musician and leader, defying a racist and red-baiting mob, sang to 15,000 at a Labor Day gathering in Peekskill, New York. |  |
| Paul Robeson (at microphone) singing to the Labor Day gathering in Peekskill, New York |
| The story and photographs of what happened |
| September 4, 1954 The Peace Pledge Union (PPU) organized a demonstration against the H-Bomb in London’s Trafalgar Square. The PPU dates back to October 1934.  Young Peace Pledge Union members today.The PPU today |
| September 4, 1957 Elizabeth Eckford and eight other young Negroes were blocked from becoming the first black student at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.  Governor Orval Faubus had called out the National Guard to prevent the court-ordered integration of the public schools in the state’s capital. President Dwight Eisenhower eventually sent in federal troops to guarantee the law was enforced.  Elizabeth Eckford Read more Elizabeth Eckford followed and taunted by mob, 1957. A very interesting related story: |
| September 4, 1970 Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) began Operation RAW (Rapid American Withdrawal). Over the following three days more than 200 veterans, assisted by the Philadelphia Guerilla Theater, staged a march from Morristown, New Jersey, to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, reenacting the invasion of small rural hamlets along the way.      Operation Rapid American Withdrawal 1970-2005: An Exhibition: |
| September 4, 1978 Simultaneous demonstrations in Moscow’s Red Square and in front of the White House in Washington, D.C. were organized by the War Resisters League, calling for nuclear disarmament. |
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So much information today!
September 3, 2024 by Heather Cox Richardson Read on Substack
Last night the Boston Globe published a leaked email from a top volunteer with the Trump campaign, former Massachusetts Republican Party vice chair Tom Mountain, telling volunteers that the Trump campaign “no longer thinks New Hampshire is winnable” and is “pulling back” from that important swing state. He urged volunteers to turn their attention instead to Pennsylvania. After the story dropped, the Trump campaign cut ties with Mountain.
Stephen Collinson of CNN and Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey, and Marianne LeVine of the Washington Post reported today that Trump’s team has given up on trying to get Trump to talk about the economy and other issues voters care about. The former president has decided to spend the rest of the campaign attacking Vice President Harris to destroy her popularity and drive voters away from her, rather than trying to attract them to himself. The Washington Post reporters noted that likely voters view Trump unfavorably and his team has concluded that while he can’t improve his own standing, he can damage hers.
Collinson dubbed Trump’s plans a “feral political offensive.”
It is not clear that this will work. As Collinson notes, Harris has refused to get dragged into the gutter with Trump, and Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark, who studies focus groups, notes that voters appear to want to put the nastiness of the past several years behind them. Still, the media-tracking company AdImpact reported that between August 23 and August 29, 57% of the total television spending for political ads was on Republican attacks on Harris.
Trump also continues to demand that Republicans support his attempt to suppress voting. Having failed to pass any of the necessary appropriations bills before going on August recess, Congress will be in a rush when it comes back into session next week. It needs to fund the government before the end of the fiscal year on September 30 in order to prevent a partial shutdown. Last Thursday, Trump told right-wing podcast host Monica Crowley that he would “shut down the government in a heartbeat” unless the government funding package includes the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act—which would give credence to the idea that noncitizens are voting in national elections despite the fact it is already illegal—and a bill restricting legal immigration.
Zeeshan Aleem of MSNBC today took public notice of Trump’s “deteriorating ability to clearly communicate.” His speeches “seem to be growing more discursive and difficult to comprehend by the day,” Aleem wrote. “Those speeches are making it hard, if not impossible, for people listening to them to understand what he wants to do with his power in office, and they’re reportedly turning off voters.” A reporter for The Guardian pointed out that attendees at Trump’s rallies are leaving as he rambles for nearly two hours, and complaining that he is “babbling.”
For his part, Trump says his wandering speech is deliberate. He calls it “the weave.” I’ll talk about, like, nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together, and it’s like, and friends of mine that are, like, English professors, they say, ‘It’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen.’”
Aleem notes that this less-focused, less-capable Trump would be exceptionally dangerous in office a second time. And yet, he was dangerous enough the first time. Today Adam Klasfeld and Ryan Goodman of Just Security released a study showing at least twelve times that Trump used the power of the presidency to retaliate against his political enemies. They note that there is no evidence that President Joe Biden or anyone else at the Biden White House ever took similar actions.
John McCain’s son Jimmy today announced that he has switched his voter registration from Republican to Democrat and will work to elect Vice President Harris and Minnesota governor Tim Walz in 2024. The younger McCain enlisted in the Marine Corps at 17 and is now an intelligence officer in the 158th Infantry Regiment of the Arizona Army National Guard. He said he is speaking out because Trump’s conduct at Arlington National Cemetery was a “violation.”
Last Friday, just before the long weekend, Trump announced that he would vote against a Florida ballot measure that would essentially enshrine in the Florida state constitution the abortion rights formerly protected by the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. When Trump had bowed to popular support for abortion rights and expressed uneasiness at the state’s current six-week ban—a cutoff reached before most women know they’re pregnant—antiabortion activists launched fierce attacks on him. So, on Friday, Trump switched his position and announced he would vote against restoring access to abortion in Florida.
That announcement has given wings to the Democrats’ messaging about Republicans’ determination to end abortion rights. It did not help the Republicans that more videos have been unearthed in which Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance said that “a childless elite” is ruling the country. He went on to excoriate this elite for what he claimed was their pride that they didn’t have children and that they had abortions, and said “they look down on people who invest their time and their future in their children. And that is a dangerous place to live as a country.” Even a right-wing Newsmax interviewer suggested that he was “painting this group with perhaps a broad brush?”
On October 1, in Louisiana, a law will go into effect that reclassified the drug misoprostol as a controlled dangerous substance. Misoprostol can be used for abortion. It is also used for routine reproductive care and during medical emergencies to treat postpartum hemorrhage. It is on the World Health Organization’s list of essential medications, a list containing those medications that are the most effective and safe to meet a health care system’s most important needs. After antiabortion activists targeted the drug, Louisiana governor Jeff Landry signed a law reclassifying it as a controlled dangerous substance. The reclassification means that the drug will no longer be easily available on obstetric hemorrhage carts.
“Take it off the carts?” one doctor said to Lorena O’Neil of the Louisiana Illuminator. “That’s death. That’s a matter of life or death.”
The Harris campaign said: “Let’s be clear: Donald Trump is the reason Louisiana women who are suffering from miscarriages or bleeding out after birth can no longer receive the critical care they would have received before Trump overturned Roe. Because of Trump, doctors are scrambling to find solutions to save their patients and are left at the whims of politicians who think they know better. Trump is proud of what he’s done. He brags about it. And if he wins, he will threaten to bring the crisis he created for Louisiana women to all 50 states.”
Vice President Harris’s campaign started its “Fighting for Reproductive Freedom” bus tour today in Palm Beach, Florida, where it drove past the Trump Organization’s Mar-a-Lago club. The bus will make at least 50 stops across the country.
Pollster Tom Bonier today continued his examination of new registrants to vote. This time his focus was North Carolina. The pattern he has found across the country continues: “surges in registration are being driven by women.” In North Carolina, he writes, the number of registrants was almost 50% higher during the week of July 21 than in the same week in 2020, and the gender gap was +12 women, compared to +6 women in 2020. The new registrants were +6 Democratic, and 43% were younger than 30.
The Harris-Walz campaign today joined the Democratic National Committee in announcing a transfer of nearly $25 million to support Democratic candidates in down-ballot state and federal races. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee will get $10 million each in hopes of supporting a Democratic majority in each chamber of Congress in the new administration.
The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, the organization devoted to winning state legislatures, will receive $2.5 million. The Democratic Governors Association and the Democratic Attorneys General Association will get $1 million each.
Finally, today, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction to stop the Trump campaign from playing the song he likes to dance to at his rallies: “Hold On, I’m Coming.” The estate of Isaac Hayes Jr., the artist who co-wrote the song, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Trump, his campaign, and a number of his allies, noting that they have never obtained a public performance license for the song although they have used it at least 133 times.
—
Notes:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/03/politics/trump-quest-destroy-harris-momentum/index.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/09/02/trump-strategy-campaign-harris/
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-government-shutdown_n_66d21e56e4b013957161cd53
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-age-harris-ramble-rcna168979
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/03/politics/jimmy-mccain-decries-trump-arlington-appearance/index.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2024/09/03/harris-25-million-transfer/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-isaac-hayes-hold-on-im-coming-lawsuit/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/sep/03/mccain-trump-arlington-democrat
X:
AudreyWSBTV/status/1830996525499011242
tbonier/status/1831139736477430080
cwebbonline/status/1830967329297178761
lorenaoneil/status/1831123870507552901
For once, Elon Musk has a case worth fighting — but he has to do it in the courts
Starlink, the satellite broadband company led by Elon Musk, said on Tuesday that it would comply with a court order and block access to X in Brazil. It marked yet another surprising twist in a wild saga that has been simmering all year but boiled over this weekend when a Brazilian judge single-handedly moved to ban X in the country.
Today let’s talk about how a personality clash between two powerful men led to tens of millions of Brazilians being prevented from accessing X — and how the move could be used to justify further restrictions on internet freedom around the world.
In April, I wrote here about how Musk had decided to risk a ban of X in Brazil over a court’s order that the platform ban a number of accounts belonging to right-wing users. Musk decided to restore the accounts in defiance of a powerful Supreme Court justice named Alexandre de Moraes, who subsequently opened an inquiry into the billionaire.
Musk, who has said he bought Twitter to turn the platform into a bulwark of free speech, positioned the move as a defense of liberty against an extremist government. Moraes, for his part, called Musk an “outlaw” whose X would “allow the massive spread of disinformation, hate speech and attacks on the democratic rule of law, violating the free choice of the electorate, by keeping voters away from real and accurate information.”
After Musk’s April outburst, X quickly reversed course, and said it would comply with the judge’s order. But the accounts that Moraes sought to terminate remained active, and last month X said he threatened to arrest a local employee for the platform’s failure to comply with his order. (The court wouldn’t comment, but threatening platform employees with jail time is an increasingly common and typically quite effective means of allowing government agents to moderate content as they see fit.)
Typically, threatening an employee with jail is all it takes to get a company to reverse course. Musk, on the other hand, said X would close its offices in Brazil.
On Friday, Moraes met that dramatic escalation with one of his own. Here are Jack Nicas and Kate Conger in the New York Times:
In a highly unusual move, Justice Moraes also said that any person in Brazil who tried to still use X via common privacy software called a virtual private network, or VPN, could be fined nearly $9,000 a day.
Justice Moraes also froze the finances of a second Musk business in Brazil, SpaceX’s Starlink satellite-internet service, to try to collect $3 million in fines he has levied against X. Starlink — which has recently exploded in popularity in Brazil, with more than 250,000 customers — said that it planned to fight the order and would make its service free in Brazil if necessary.
Moreover, while he quickly reversed course, Moraes initially ordered Apple and Google to block X at the level of the app store in Brazil, as well as blocking VPN apps that let users circumvent geographic barriers to app usage.
While moves like these are common in authoritarian countries such as Russia or China, they are extraordinary to see in democracies, which typically place a higher value on free expression.
In any case, the fallout from Moraes’ ban was swift. Countless fan and meme pages went silent. Bluesky added 2 million users, and Threads saw some lift as well. (They are currently the No. 1 and 2 apps respectively in the Brazilian App Store, per Similarweb.)
And depending on how long the ban lasts, it will likely degrade even further the value of X, which a new analysis over the weekend found had lost an estimated $24 billion in value since Musk acquired Twitter in 2022.
What makes the story of Brazil and X such an unusual tech policy story is the way it has been driven almost entirely by two people.
On one side is Musk, who has often claimed the mantle of free speech warrior in public while capitulating to government requests in private. One analysis last year found that under Musk, X had given into 83 percent of requests from authoritarian governments to remove content. And he appears more willing to accede to the requests of right-wing governments, such as India’s.
In 2021, it seemed possible that India would be the first democracy to ban Twitter, after the company fought court orders to remove political dissent — including from left-wing opponents to the government of Narendra Modi. But relations have warmed between Musk and the Modi government since he stopped fighting those battles.
“The rules in India for what can appear on social media are quite strict, and we can’t go beyond the laws of a country,” Musk told the BBC last year. “If we have a choice of either our people go to prison or we comply with the laws, we will comply with the laws.” At another point in the interview, Musk said: “If people of a given country are against a certain type of speech, they should talk to their elected representatives and pass a law to prevent it.”
Brazil once again gave Musk the choice of sending an employee to prison or complying with its laws. This time, he chose not to comply.
Musk’s defiance likely would have sparked a backlash in most countries where X operates. But he has found a particularly pugnacious opponent in Moraes, a hugely powerful and controversial figure within Brazilian politics who came to prominence during the tenure of former president Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro, a Trump-like figure who threatened to undermine Brazil’s democracy, lost the 2022 election and left office after a violent riot at the capitol by his supporters last year.
Both during and since Bolsonaro’s presidency, Moraes has used the unusual powers of his office to order people arrested over their social media posts, account bans on the platforms where they posted, and even temporarily removing a governor from office. At X, he has sought the removal of at least 140 accounts, the Times reported, and often delivers his orders in sealed documents that do not specify any rationale for his decision.
Moraes is not the first government agent to make overbroad legal requests of a tech platform. Google, Meta, and other companies receive thousands of requests like these every year, and disclose them in aggregate in annual transparency reports. The reason they publish those reports is to serve as a check on governments that seek to abuse their power by seeking information from platforms for surveillance and other potentially problematic uses.
Crucially, Google and Meta also fight against overbroad requests in court. Sometimes, they win. The result is a kind of dance between platforms and governments that leaves everyone at least somewhat disappointed but is also the reason that so many people around the world can speak freely online.
I don’t post on X any more myself, and I will not lament its passing when it disappears. But whatever role the 140 X accounts in question in Brazil may have played in threatening Brazil’s democracy, they cannot have threatened it more than silencing the 20 million or so Brazilians who have been using it regularly. Particularly when Brazil’s move will be seen by autocracies as justification to enact ever more onerous speech restrictions of their own.
Like Pavel Durov before him, Musk appears to have thought he could escape the reach of regulators indefinitely. This weekend, he began to learn the same lesson Durov has: you can’t outrun the legal system forever. Had Musk fought for his users in court earlier, he might have avoided a ban. Instead, as he has before in so many other things, Musk chose to do it the hard way.
https://www.platformer.news/x-ban-brazil-musk-moraes/?ref=platformer-newsletter
Scottie's Playtime 